Direct X-ray spectral deprojection of galaxy clusters

Temperature, density and abundance profiles of the hot intracluster medium (ICM) are important diagnostics of the complex interactions of gravitational and feedback processes in the cores of galaxy clusters. Deprojection of X-ray data by methods such as PROJCT, which are model dependent, can produce large and unphysical oscillating temperature profiles. Here, we validate a deprojection routine, Direct Spectral Deprojection (DSDEPROJ), showing that it solves some of the issues inherent to model-dependent deprojection routines. DSDEPROJ is a model-independent approach, assuming only spherical symmetry, which subtracts projected spectra from each successive annulus to produce a set of deprojected spectra.