Metal-rich multi-phase gas in M 87

AGN-driven metal transport, magnetic-field supported multi-temperature gas, and constraints on non-thermal emission observed with XMM-Newton

¹ Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestial Physics, Giessenbachstr, 85748 Garching, Germany e-mail: aurora@mpe.mpg.de
² SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Sorbonnelaan 2, 3584 CA Utrecht, The Netherlands
³ Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Schwarzschildstr 1, 85748 Garching, Germany
⁴ University of Maryland Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD, 21250, USA
⁵ Jacobs University Bremen, PO Box 750 561, 28725 Bremen, Germany

Received: 27 September 2007
Accepted: 1 February 2008

Abstract

We use deep (~120 ks) XMM-Newton data of the M 87 halo to analyze its spatially resolved temperature structure and chemical composition. We focus particularly on the regions of enhanced X-ray brightness associated with the inner radio lobes, which are known not to be described very well by single-temperature spectral models. Compared to a simple two-temperature fit, we obtain a better and more physical description of the spectra using a model that involves a continuous range of temperatures in each spatial bin. The range of temperatures of the multiphase gas spans ~0.6–3.2 keV. Such a multiphase structure is only possible if thermal conduction is suppressed by magnetic fields. In the multi-temperature regions, we find a correlation between the amount of cool gas (with a temperature below that of the surrounding X-ray plasma) and the metallicity, and conclude that the cool gas is more metal-rich than the ambient halo. In the frame of the assumed thermal model, we estimate the average Fe abundance of the cool gas to ~2.2 solar. Our results thus point toward the key role of the active galactic nucleus (AGN) in transporting heavy elements into the intracluster medium through the uplift of cool, metal-rich gas from the galaxy. However, the abundance ratios of O/Si/S/Fe in and outside the X-ray arms are similar, indicating that the dominant fraction of metals in the gas halo was uplifted by AGN outbursts relatively recently compared to the age of M 87. Our best estimate for the mass of the cool gas is 510⁸ , which probably stems from a mixture of ICM, stellar mass loss, and Type Ia supernova products. ≈30–110 Myr are required to produce the observed metals in the cool gas. Finally, we put upper limits on possible non-thermal X-ray emission from M 87 and, combining it with the 90 cm radio maps, we put lower limits of around ~0.5–1.0 μG on the magnetic field strength.