ASCA Measurements of Silicon and Iron Abundances in the Intracluster Medium

We analyzed the ASCA X-ray data of 40 nearby clusters of galaxies, whose intracluster-medium temperature distributes in the range of 0.9–10 keV. We measured the Si and Fe abundances of the intracluster medium, spatially averaging over each cluster, but excluding the central ∼ 0.15 h50−1 Mpc region in order to avoid any possible abundance gradients and complex temperature structures. The Fe abundances of these clusters are 0.2–0.3 solar, with only weak dependence on the temperature of the intracluster medium, hence on the cluster richness. In contrast, the Si abundance is observed to increase from 0.3 to 0.6–0.7 solar from the poorer to richer clusters. These results suggest that the supernovae of both type-Ia and type-II significantly contribute to the metal enrichment of the intracluster medium, with the relative contribution of type-II supernovae increasing towards richer clusters. We suggest a possibility that a considerable fraction of type-II supernova products escaped from poorer systems.