X-Ray Thermal Coronae of Galaxies in Hot Clusters: Ubiquity of Embedded Mini-Cooling Cores

We present a systematic investigation of X-ray thermal coronae in 157 early-type and 22 late-type galaxies from a survey of 25 hot (kT>3 keV), nearby (z<0.05) clusters, based on Chandra archival data. Cool galactic coronae (kT=0.5-1.1 keV generally) have been found to be common, >60% in L_Ks>2L_* galaxies. These embedded coronae in hot clusters are generally smaller, less luminous, and less massive than coronae in poor environments, demonstrating the negative effects of hot cluster environments on galactic coronae. Nevertheless, these coronae still manage to survive ICM stripping, evaporation, rapid cooling, and powerful AGN outflows, making them a rich source of information about gas stripping, microscopic transport, and feedback processes in the cluster environment. Heat conduction across the boundary of the coronae has to be suppressed by a factor of >~100, which implies that the X-ray gas in early-type galaxies is magnetized and the magnetic field plays an important role in energy transfer. The luminous, embedded coronae, with high central density (0.1-0.4 cm^-3), are miniversions of group and cluster cooling cores. As the prevalence of coronae of massive galaxies implies a long lifetime (>~several Gyr), there must be a heat source inside coronae to offset cooling. While we argue that AGN heating may not generally be the heat source, we conclude that SN heating can be enough as long as the kinetic energy of SNe can be efficiently dissipated. Diffuse thermal coronae have also been detected in at least 8 of 22 late-type galaxies in our sample. The fraction of luminous X-ray AGNs (>10⁴¹ ergs s^-1) is not small (~5%) in our sample.