Cluster of Galaxies: An X-ray Perspective

Abstract

There has been extensive recent progress in X-ray observations of clusters of galaxies with the analysis of the entire ASCA database and recent new results from Beppo-SAX, Chandra, and XMM-Newton. The temperature profiles of most clusters are isothermal from 0.05--0.6 virial radii, contrary to theoretical expectations and early results from ASCA. Similarly, the abundance profiles of Fe are roughly constant outside the central regions. The luminosity-temperature relation for a very large sample of clusters show that L_X is proportional to T^3 over the whole observable luminosity range at low redshift, but the variance increases at low luminosity, explaining the previously claimed steepening at low luminosity. Recent accurate cluster photometry in red and infrared passbands have resulted in much better correlations of optical and X-ray properties, but there is still larger scatter than one might expect between total light and X-ray temperature and luminosity. The velocity dispersion and the X-ray temperature are strongly correlated, but the slope of the relation is somewhat steeper than expected. The surface brightness profiles of clusters are very well fit by the isothermal beta model out to large radii and show scaling relations, outside the central regions, consistent with a Lambda-dominated Universe.