The chemical enrichment of the ICM with BeppoSAX

Abstract

We review observations on the chemical enrichment of the intracluster medium (ICM) performed using BeppoSAX MECS data. The picture emerging is that non-cooling flow clusters have flat metallicity profiles, whereas a strong enhancement in the abundance is found in the central regions of the cooling flow clusters. All the non-cooling flow clusters present evidence of recent merger activity suggesting that the merger events redistributes efficiently the metal content of the ICM. The observed abundance excess in the central regions of cooling flow clusters is probably due to metals ejected from the cD galaxy located in the cluster core. Cooling flow cluster have also enhanced Nickel abundances in their cores with respect to the non cooling flow clusters.