Metal enrichment of the ICM due to ram-pressure stripping of cluster galaxies

Abstract

The Intra-Cluster Medium (ICM) contains a significant amount of metals. As heavy elements can not be processed in the ICM itself, enriched material has to be produced by the stellar population of the cluster galaxies and is subsequently expelled from the host galaxy into the ambient medium. Here we present hydrodynamic simulations investigating the effect of ram-pressure stripping of cluster galaxies. The efficiency, resulting spatial distribution of the metals and the time dependency of this enrichment process on galaxy cluster scale will be shown in this presentation. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.