TESTING FORMATION MODELS AND HEATING AND FEEDBACK MECHANISMS WITH FOSSIL GROUPS

We propose Xray observations of three Xray bright fossil groups.. centeredon the dominant galaxies NGC4936, IC1633 and NGC6269. With XMMNewton, we canderive accurate gas density, temperature, abundance, pressure, and entropydistributions to test mass distribution predictions from numerical simulations,investigate the interaction of radio lobes with the cooling gas in the centralgalaxies, determine the past star formation history, inventory the stellarcomponent through abundance determinations, test formation theories of fossilgroups to determine their relationship to more typical groups and clusters, andfinally, test models of thermal conduction which may explain the absence of coolgas in cooling flows... truncated!, Please see actual data for full text [truncated!, Please see actual data for full text]