Origin of the Scatter in the X‐Ray Luminosity of Early‐Type Galaxies Observed withROSAT

Statistical properties of X-ray luminosity and temperature are studied for 52 early-type galaxies based on the ROSAT PSPC data. All of the X-ray luminous galaxies show largely extended emission with a radius of a few times 10 r e , while X-ray faint galaxies do not show such a component. This leads to a division of early-type galaxies into two categories: X-ray extended and X-ray compact galaxies. Except for a few galaxies in dense cluster environments, the luminosity and temperature of X-ray compact galaxies are well explained by a kinematical heating of the gas supplied by stellar mass loss. In contrast, X-ray extended galaxies indicate large scatter in the X-ray luminosity. We discuss the notion that X-ray extended galaxies are the central objects of large potential structures and that the presence or absence of this potential is the main origin of the large scatter in the X-ray luminosity.