The Role of Intracluster Stars in the Enrichment of the Intracluster Medium

How the intracluster medium (ICM) becomes enriched with metals is an important,yet unresolved, question. Conventional models, which hypothesize that clustergalaxies inject metals into the ICM via galactic winds and/or rampressurestripping, fall short unless they appeal either to extreme 100% mass loss ornonstandard stellar initial mass functions to explain the ICM.s highenrichment. In contrast, our new measurements of the intracluster stars(Gonzalez et al. 2004), when combined with simple modeling, suggests that theyproduce a large fraction of the ICM.s metals (Zaritsky et al. 2005). Given thesurprising nature of this result, in which at least some of the ICM.s metals areproduced in situ instead of being transported out of galaxies, it is essential to further test our model. truncated!, Please see actual data for full text [truncated!, Please see actual data for full text]