Calcium-rich gap transients: solving the calcium conundrum in the intracluster medium
Abstract
X-ray measurements suggest that the abundance of calcium in the intracluster medium is higher than can be explained using favored models for core-collapse and Type Ia supernovae alone. We investigate whether the "calcium conundrum" in the intracluster medium can be alleviated by including a contribution from the recently discovered subclass of supernovae known as calcium-rich gap transients. Although the calcium-rich gap transients make up only a small fraction of all supernovae events, we find that their high calcium yields are sufficient to reproduce the X-ray measurements found for nearby rich clusters. We find the χ2 goodness-of-fit metric improves from 84 to 2 by including this new class. Moreover, calcium-rich supernovae preferentially occur in the outskirts of galaxies making it easier for the nucleosynthesis products of these events to be incorporated in the intracluster medium via ram-pressure stripping. The discovery of calcium-rich gap transients in clusters and groups far from any individual galaxy suggests that supernovae associated with intracluster stars may play an important role in enriching the intracluster medium. Calcium-rich gap transients may also help explain anomalous calcium abundances in many other astrophysical systems including individual stars in the Milky Way, the halos of nearby galaxies, and the circumgalactic medium. Our work highlights the importance of considering the diversity of supernovae types and corresponding yields when modeling the abundance of the intracluster medium and other gas reservoirs.
Additional Information
© 2014. The American Astronomical Society. Received 2013 October 21. Accepted 2013 December 7. Published 2013 December 19. We are grateful to Jelle de Plaa and Esra Bulbul for providing additional insight on their previous work and we thank Avishay Gal-Yam, Melissa Graham, and Paolo Mazzali for helpful discussions. This work was inspired by presentations at the conference Energetic Astronomy: Richard Mushotzky at 65. We thank Chris Reynolds for his help organizing the conference.Attached Files
Published - Mulchaey_2014_ApJL_780_L34.pdf
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