New Constraints on Supernova Explosion Models from Clusters of Galaxies

The analysis of metal enrichment in clusters of galaxies provides fundamental information to quantify and discriminate enrichment mechanisms such as protogalactic winds, Ram-pressure stripping, as well as heavy element displacement due to nuclear AGN activity in clusters. However, this study has been limited by the uncertainties on SN Type metal yields models. While theoretical models have been advancing at a fast pace, uncertainties can reach factors of two or more for the yields of specific elements for different explosion mechanisms. Since the Intracluster gas is a relatively simple medium from which to extract abundances, one can, in principle, reverse the problem and, assuming that the abundances are well determined, select the best SN explosion models based on measured abundances and their ratios. Here we use metal abundance ratios in a sample of 56 clusters and groups regions, of different temperatures spanning a wide range of values, using ASCA, Chandra and XMM to analyze the models that best fit the data. We find that the 3-D SN Ia model with bubble ignition outperform the other SN Ia models when compared to the observations. We also find that super energetic Hypernovae models agree best with the observations when compared to SN II models, suggesting that a significant contribution of the elements in the ICM (and galaxies) maybe due to Pop III stars.