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# Rational Competitive Analysis

## 1 Introduction

Competitive analysis is a central tool for the design and analysis of algorithms and protocols for decision making under uncertainty . It is a well studied and widely applicable approach that fits the framework of qualitative decision-making in AI (see e.g. ). The competitive analysis approach attempts to minimize the ratio between the payoff an agent obtains and the payoff he could have obtained had he known the behavior of the environment. For example, consider the following trading problem (see , Chapter 14). An agent who holds $100 may wish to exchange them for British pounds. At each point in time, e.g. every minute in between 8AM and 4PM, an exchange ratio of dollars and pounds is announced. This ratio changes dynamically, and in an unpredicted manner. The agent would need to choose the time in which it will trade his $100 for pounds. Notice that if the agent would have known the sequence of exchange rates, $`e`$, then he could have chosen a strategy $`o(e)`$ that maximizes his payoff. If the agent chooses a strategy $`s`$, then we can compute the ratio of the payoffs obtained by $`o(e)`$ and $`s`$. We can do similarly for every sequence of exchange rates $`e^{}`$. Based on this, we can compute the highest (i.e. worst) ratio, over all possible sequences, that might be obtained when we compare optimal strategies to $`s`$. This ratio is denoted by $`R(s)`$. According to the competitive analysis approach, the agent will apply the competitive ratio decision criterion: he will choose a strategy $`s`$ for which $`R(s)`$ is minimal. This decision criterion may be quite helpful when we lack probabilistic assumptions about the environment. For example, assume that the minimal value of $`R()`$, which is obtained by some strategy $`s`$, is 2. Then, by selecting $`s`$, the agent guarantees himself a payoff which is at least half of the optimal payoff that he could have obtained had he known the actual environment behavior.

The competitive ratio has also an additive variant (also termed minimax regret ), where we replace the term ”ratio” by the term ”difference” in the definition of $`R`$. So, in our example, if a strategy $`s`$ that minimizes $`R()`$ obtains a competitive difference/regret of 20, then this implies that by performing $`s`$ the agent gets a payoff (e.g. worth in British pounds) which is at most 20 lower than what he could have obtained had he known the behavior of the environment. In the sequel, we will use the additive version of the competitive ratio decision criterion.

Competitive analysis has been applied to a variety of classical problems in computer science, such as the k-server problem  and paging , as well as to more general algorithmic problems . In all of these studies the environment that the agent acts in is non-strategic, and therefore does not assume to follow any ”rational” behavior. In this paper we extend the concept of competitive analysis to the context of multi-agent systems. In a multi-agent system the environment in which an agent takes his decision consists of other ”rational” agents. Following previous work on competitive analysis, our approach is non-Bayesian and normative; we would like to find a decision rule for the agent that will rely as little as possible on assumptions about the behavior of his environment. Therefore, we adopt the requirement that agent $`A`$ should rule out a behavior $`b_1`$ of agent $`B`$ only if $`b_1`$ is dominated by another behavior, $`b_2`$, of that agent. Dominated behaviors are purely irrational in any decision making model. The agent will choose his behavior according to the competitive ratio decision rule. However, he should consider only rational behaviors of the other agents; a behavior of an agent will be considered irrational if and only if it is dominated by another behavior of it.

In section 2 we describe bidding games, a family of games that will serve us for the illustration of the basic concepts developed in this paper. Bidding games are representatives of k-price auctions, a central class of economic mechanisms . In section 3 we present a competitive analysis of bidding games. In section 4 we introduce rational competitive analysis, a new tool for normative decision making, that generalizes competitive analysis to the context of rational environments, and apply it to bidding games. In section 5 we consider repeated (multi-stage) games. We present several results on the relationships between (rational) competitive analysis of repeated games and the competitive analysis of the particular (one-shot) games they consist of. Then, in section 6, we discuss and study variants and modifications of the one-way trading problem, using rational competitive analysis. In particular, we study the multi-agent one-way trading problem.

## 2 Bidding games

We start by recalling the general definition of a (strategic form) game.

###### Definition 2.1

A game is a tuple $`G=N=\{1,2,\mathrm{},n\},S=\{S_i\}_{i=1}^n,\{U_i\}_{i=1}^n`$, where $`N`$ is a set of $`n2`$ players, $`S_i`$ is the set of strategies available to player $`i`$, and $`U_i:\mathrm{\Pi }_{j=1}^nS_jR`$ is the utility function of player $`i`$.

In a game, each player selects a strategy from a set of available strategies. The tuple of strategies selected, one by each player, determines the payoff of each of the agents111Here and elsewhere we use the terms player and agent interchangeably. (as prescribed by the utility functions).

In a bidding game, a center attempts to obtain a service from a set of potential suppliers. Each such supplier has a certain cost associated with that service. This cost is taken to be an integer between $`KT`$ and $`K`$, where $`K`$ and $`T`$ are w.l.o.g integers, $`K>T>0`$. Each agent will offer his service and ask for a payment in the range in between $`KT`$ and $`K`$. We will associate the request for payment of $`Ki`$ with the integer $`i`$, where $`0iT`$. The center will choose as the service provider the supplier with the lowest asking price. There are various ways for determining the payment to that agent; in particular, the agent can be paid his asking price, the second lowest asking price, or the third lowest asking price. We assume that the costs for providing the service by each of the agents are common knowledge among them, although the center might not be familiar with these costs. Although this is quite natural for the above procurement problem, other assumptions can be treated similarly.

Our definition of bidding games will capture the above, by considering a fully isomorphic situation, namely: the auctioning of a good. The good is held by the center. Each agent has a valuation (i.e. maximal willingness to pay) for the good. Each agent needs to decide on his bid. The center will allocate the good to the agent with the highest bid (rather than to the agent with the lowest asking price, as in the isomorphic procurement problem).

Formally, we have:

###### Definition 2.2

Given a set of $`n`$ players, and an integer $`T>>1`$, a bidding game is determined by the tuple B=$`(x_1,\mathrm{},x_n,k)`$ where $`x_i=\frac{l_i}{T}`$ for some integer $`0l_iT`$, and $`1kn`$ is an integer. Player $`i`$’s strategy in $`B`$ is a decision about $`b_i[0,T]`$. Given a strategy profile $`b=(b_1,b_2,\mathrm{},b_n)`$ denote by $`b_{[i]}`$ the $`i`$-th order statistic of this tuple. Let $`M(b)`$ be the number of elements of $`b`$ that equals $`b_{[1]}`$. Then, $`U_i(b)=\frac{1}{M(b)}(x_i\frac{b_{[k]}}{T})`$ if $`b_i=b_{[1]}`$, and $`U_i(b)=0`$ otherwise.

In the above formalism, $`x_i`$ is the valuation of agent $`i`$ (that is normalized to the interval ), while $`b_i`$ denotes the bid made by agent $`i`$. The payment made by the winner is determined by the parameter $`k`$. If $`k=1`$ we get the standard high-bid wins (or first-price) auction; if $`k=2`$ then we get the famous Vickrey (second-price) auction, while if $`k=3`$ we get the case of third-price auctions.222Third-price auctions have been shown to have appealing properties in the context of Internet Auctions .

For ease of presentation we will assume that $`2l_i<T`$ for every $`1in`$, that $`ij`$ implies $`l_il_j`$, and that $`Tn`$.

## 3 Competitive Analysis

In a game, agent $`i`$ is facing an environment that consists of the other agents. The actions to be selected by these agents are not under the control of $`i`$. Following the literature on competitive analysis, the competitive ratio decision rule may be used in order to choose an action for that agent.

Definition 3.1 Given a game $`G`$, and a strategy profile $`s=(s_1,s_2,\mathrm{},s_n)\mathrm{\Pi }_{j=1}^nS_j`$, the regret of player $`i`$ is given by $`Reg_i(s_i,s_i)=max_{tS_i}U_i(s_1,\mathrm{},s_{i1},t,s_{i+1},\mathrm{},s_n)U_i(s)`$. A strategy $`sS_i`$ is a competitive strategy for agent $`i`$ if $`sargmin_{tS_i}max_{qS_i}Reg_i(t,q)`$, where $`S_i`$ denotes the possible strategy profiles of players in $`N\{i\}`$.

Given the above definition we are interested in applying competitive analysis to bidding games. We now present three claims about competitive analysis of bidding games. These claims are associated with the competitive analysis of 1st,2nd, and 3rd-price auctions, respectively.

###### Claim 3.1

Given the bidding game B=$`(x_1,\mathrm{},x_n,1)`$, a competitive strategy for agent $`i`$ yields a regret value of $`\frac{\alpha }{T}`$, where $`\alpha `$ equals the upper integer value of $`\frac{l_i1}{2}`$.

Basic idea behind proof: Agent $`i`$ can lose by submitting a bid that is higher than his valuation. On the other hand, by submitting a bid that is below $`l_i1`$ agent $`i`$ might lose, since agent $`ji`$ might submit $`l_i1`$ as a winning bid. Since agents may submit the bid 0, agent $`i`$ will minimize his regret by submitting a bid that equals (the upper integer value of) half of the difference between $`l_i1`$ and 0.

###### Claim 3.2

Given the bidding game B=$`(x_1,\mathrm{},x_n,2)`$ a competitive strategy for agent $`i`$ yields a zero regret.

Basic idea behind proof: Here the optimal strategy for an agent, regardless of what the others do, is to send his actual valuation as his bid; this is a well known property of the Vickrey auction . As a result we get a regret of 0.

###### Claim 3.3

Given the bidding game B=$`(x_1,\mathrm{},x_n,3)`$, and assume w.l.o.g that $`x_1>x_2>\mathrm{}>x_n`$, then agent $`j`$’s competitive strategy is to send the bid $`min(2l_j,T)`$.

Basic idea behind proof: Given that agents may submit the bid 0, agent $`j`$ might reach a regret of $`\frac{l_j}{T}`$ if he is not the winner. Submitting however a bid that is higher than $`2l_j`$ may also lead to a regret of $`\frac{l_j}{T}`$, given that the agents may submit $`2l_j`$ as their bids. Combining these observations, we get that submitting the bid $`min(2l_j,T)`$ is the competitive strategy.

## 4 Rational Competitive Analysis

Although competitive analysis is a most powerful concept from a non-Bayesian normative perspective, it may be quite restrictive when we consider decision-making in multi-agent systems. Following the spirit of competitive analysis for normative decision making, we refrain from using probabilistic assumptions and game-theoretic equilibrium analysis.333The debate about whether competitive ratio and non-Bayesian decision making are expressive or useful for normative or descriptive objectives is beyond the scope of this paper; see  for sound and complete axiomatization of the competitive ratio decision criterion. However, one can still improve on the use of competitive analysis by considering minimal rationality requirements.

Definition 4.1 Given a game $`G=N=\{1,2,\mathrm{},n\},\{S_i\}_{i=1}^n,\{U_i\}_{i=1}^n`$, we say that a strategy $`s_iS_i`$ weakly dominates a strategy $`s_i^{^{}}S_i`$ if $`U_i(s_i,t)U_i(s_i^{^{}},t)`$ for every strategy profile $`t`$ of the players in $`N\{i\}`$, and there exists such strategy profile $`t^{}`$ for which $`U_i(s_i,t^{})>U_i(s_i^{^{}},t^{})`$. A strategy $`sS_i`$ will be called rational is there is no other strategy $`\overline{s}S_i`$ that weakly dominates it. Given a game $`G`$, the set of rational strategies for player $`i`$ will be denoted by $`Rat(S_i)`$.

In any reasonable model agents will choose only from the set of non-dominated strategies. Our idea is therefore to combine the powerful idea of competitive analysis and this minimal requirement of rationality, in order to re-introduce competitive analysis into the framework of multi-agent systems.

Definition 4.2 A strategy $`sS_i`$ is a rationally competitive strategy if $`sargmin_{tS_i}max_{qRat(S_i)}Reg_i(t,q)`$, where $`Rat(S_i)`$ denotes the possible rational strategy profiles of players in $`N\{i\}`$, i.e. each player $`jN\{i\}`$ chooses its strategy from $`Rat(S_j)`$.

Basically, a rationally competitive strategy applies the competitive ratio decision criterion, while taking into account only rational activities of the environment. As the following claims illustrate, rational competitive analysis introduces an improved approach to normative decision making.

###### Claim 4.1

Given the bidding game B=$`(x_1,\mathrm{},x_n,1)`$, a rational competitive strategy for agent $`i`$ yields a regret of $`\frac{\alpha }{T}`$, where $`\alpha `$ equals the upper integer value of $`\frac{min(l_i,max_{j;ji}l_j)2}{2}`$.

Basic idea behind proof: We observe that any strategy that tells agent $`j`$ to submit a bid which is greater than or equals to his valuation is dominated by the strategy of submitting his valuation minus 1. Given our assumptions about the possible valuations, all other strategies, excluding the strategy of submitting the bid 0, are not dominated. As a result, from the perspective of agent $`i`$, if his valuation is the highest one, he will minimize his regret if he will make a bid that is half of the distance between $`max_{j;ji}l_j1`$ and 1. If agent $`i`$’s valuation is not the highest one then he will minimize his regret (again, taking into account the assumptions on possible valuations) if he will make a bid in between $`l_i1`$ and 1.

Notice that rational competitive analysis allows us to improve upon the type of reasoning carried out in claim 3.1. Technically, in the case of a bidding game with $`k=1`$, rationality implies that we need to take the minimum between $`l_i`$ and the highest other agents’ valuation in our analysis, rather than consider $`l_i`$ only.

###### Claim 4.2

Given the bidding game B=$`(x_1,\mathrm{},x_n,2)`$ a rational competitive strategy for agent $`i`$ yields a zero regret.

As we can see, unlike the major effect of the rationality assumption in the case of a first-price auction, there is no change in the analysis in the case of a second-price auction. In the case of a third-price auction, we see again the effect of the revised notion:

###### Claim 4.3

Given the bidding game B=$`(x_1,\mathrm{},x_n,3)`$, and assume w.l.o.g that $`x_1>x_2>\mathrm{}>x_n`$, then a rational competitive strategy for agent $`j(j=1,2)`$, is to submit the bid $`min(2l_jl_{[3]},T)`$, where $`l_{[3]}`$ corresponds to the 3rd highest $`x_k`$; a zero-regret rational competitive strategy for agent $`i,3in`$, is to submit $`l_i`$.

Basic idea behind proof: First, observe that any strategy where the agent submits a bid that is below that agent’s valuation is dominated by the strategy that tells him to submit his actual valuation as his bid. As a result, for agents $`3,4,\mathrm{},n`$ there is a 0 regret in submitting their actual valuations as their bids. Let us assume that agent $`i`$ (where $`i`$ is 1 or 2) submits a bid, then it can lose $`\frac{l_il_{[3]}}{T}`$ if it turns out not be the highest bidder (since agent $`j`$ submits a higher bid). On the other hand, by submitting the bid $`b_i>l_i`$ a loss of $`\frac{b_il_i}{T}`$ may be caused, since (from the perspective of agent $`i`$) two other agents may submit the bid $`b_i`$. This implies that the bid $`min(2l_il_{[3]},T)`$ will minimize this agent’s regret.

As we can see, in the case of $`k=3`$ as well, rational competitive analysis for bidding games leads to an improved normative approach to decision making. In particular, the competitive strategy of Claim 3.3 specifies a too high bid, and is not a rationally competitive strategy; as a result, it fails to serve in a multi-agent context.

## 5 Rational competitive analysis in repeated games: folk theorems

We first recall the notion of finitely repeated games .

###### Definition 5.1

Given an integer $`l>0`$ and a game $`G=N=\{1,2,\mathrm{},n\},S=\{S_i\}_{i=1}^n,\{U_i\}_{i=1}^n`$, a repeated game $`RG=(G,l)`$ with respect to $`G`$ is a game where $`G`$ is repeatedly played $`l`$ times. $`RG`$ consists of the following strategies and utility functions: a strategy of agent $`i`$ in $`RG`$ determines the strategy of $`G`$ to be taken by $`i`$ in the $`k`$-th iteration of $`G`$, as a function of the history of strategies of $`G`$ selected by the others in iterations $`1,2,\mathrm{},k1`$. Given a tuple of strategies of $`RG`$, one for each agent, the payoff for agent $`i`$ is the sum of its payoffs along the $`l`$ iterations. A sub-game of a repeated game $`RG`$ is a repeated game that starts from iteration $`1ql`$ of $`RG`$ and consists of $`lq+1`$ iterations. A (rationally) competitive strategy in $`RG`$ is a strategy that is a (rationally) competitive strategy at each of the sub-games of $`RG`$.444This definition is in the spirit of sub-game perfect equilibrium in game theory.

Repeated games have been of much interest in the game-theory literature, due to the fact they enable to study agents’ actions as a function of past events and other agents’ actions. The study of repeated games is central to the understanding of basic issues in coordination and cooperation (e.g. ), as well as for the study of learning in games (e.g. ).

One of the central challenges for the study of repeated games is to establish general theorems (titled folk-theorems) that explain/recommend behavior in these (repeated) games by means of solution concepts for the games they consist of. In our case, it would be of interest to understand what will be a rationally competitive strategy in a repeated game, and try to relate it to the competitive analysis of the simple one-shot game that takes place at each iteration.

We now present a general result about competitive analysis in repeated games. For ease of presentation we will assume that $`G`$ is a two-player game, where all payoffs are distinct. We will also assume w.l.o.g that all payoffs are non-negative. Given a repeated game $`(G,l)`$, let us denote the highest payoff for agent $`i`$ in $`G`$ by $`h_i(G)`$, and the second highest payoff of agent $`i`$ in $`G`$ by $`sh_i(G)`$.

###### Theorem 5.1

Given a repeated game $`(G,l)`$ and assume that for each agent $`i`$ $`h_i(G)2sh_i(G)`$, then a rationally competitive strategy for agent $`i`$ in the game $`(G,l)`$ is obtained by performing the competitive strategy of it in $`G`$ on iterations $`1,2,\mathrm{},l1`$ and performing the rational competitive strategy of it in $`G`$ on the last iteration.

Basic idea behind proof: From the perspective of agent $`i`$, assuming we are at stage $`k<l`$, the selection of any strategy $`s`$ of $`G`$ by $`j`$ can be complemented to a non-dominated strategy of $`j`$; this non-dominated strategy will tell $`j`$ to choose the strategy associated with $`h_j(G)`$ in stages $`k+1,\mathrm{},l`$. The reason that the resulting strategy is not dominated is that $`j`$ considers the strategy where $`i`$ will also choose in stages $`k+1,\mathrm{},l`$ the strategy (of his) in $`G`$ that corresponds to $`h_j(G)`$, and does it only if in stage $`k`$ agent $`j`$ chooses $`s`$; in addition, according to this strategy $`i`$ will choose the strategy that corresponds to $`sh_j(G)`$ is stage $`k`$. This implies that agent $`i`$ should consider at stages $`1,2,\mathrm{},l1`$ all possible strategies of agent $`j`$ in $`G`$. In the last stage agent $`i`$ is no longer subject to the above considerations and will choose the rationally competitive strategy of $`G`$.

The above theorem shows a strong connection between competitive analysis in repeated games and competitive analysis in simple single-shot games. As it turns out, this connection can be further generalized to a much richer context:

###### Definition 5.2

Let $`\overline{G}=(G_1,G_2,\mathrm{},G_m)`$ be a sequence of games where $`N`$ is the set of players in each of the games in the sequence, and game $`G_i`$ is played in iteration $`i`$. The strategy of agent $`t`$ in $`\overline{G}`$ determines its strategy in $`G_i`$, $`1im`$, as a function of the strategies of $`G_j`$, $`1j<i`$, selected by the other agents in previous iterations. Given a tuple of strategies of $`\overline{G}`$, one for each agent, the payoff of agent $`i`$ is taken as the sum of its payoffs in the $`m`$ iterations.

###### Theorem 5.2

Given a sequence of games $`\overline{G}=(G_1,G_2,\mathrm{},G_m)`$ where $`N`$ is the set of players in each of the games in the sequence, and game $`G_j`$ is played in iteration $`j`$, and assume that $`h_i(G_k)2sh_i(G_l)`$ for every $`1k,lm`$, and for every agent $`i`$, then a rationally competitive strategy for agent $`i`$ in the game $`\overline{G}`$ is obtained by performing the competitive strategy of $`G_j`$ in iterations $`1,2,\mathrm{},l1`$ and performing the rational competitive strategy of $`G_m`$ in the last iteration.

The above theorem can be generalized into a situation where $`n`$ games from among the set of games $`\{G_1,G_2,\mathrm{},G_m\}`$ are executed in some random order (with possible repetitions). Formally, this can be captured by the following definition and theorem:

Definition 5.3 Given a set of games $`G=\{G_1,G_2,\mathrm{},G_m\}`$, a random game with respect to $`G`$, $`\overline{G}`$, is a sequence of $`n`$ games $`(g_1,g_2,\mathrm{},g_n)`$, where $`g_iG(1in)`$ and $`N`$ is the set of players in each of the games in the sequence. The game to be played in iteration $`i`$, $`g_i`$, is randomly selected from the set $`G`$ independently of previous selections made. The strategy of agent $`t`$ in $`\overline{G}`$ determines its strategy in $`g_i`$, $`1in`$, as a function of the strategies of $`g_j`$, $`1j<i`$, selected by the other agents in previous iterations. Given a tuple of strategies of $`\overline{G}`$, one for each agent, the payoff of agent $`t`$ is taken as the sum of its payoffs in the $`n`$ iterations. A sub-game of a random game $`\overline{G}`$ with respect to $`G`$, is a random game with respect to $`G`$ that starts from iteration $`1jn`$ and consists of $`nj+1`$ iterations as above. A (rationally) competitive strategy in a random game is required to be a (rationally) competitive strategy at each sub-game of it.

###### Theorem 5.3

Given a random game $`\overline{G}`$ with respect to $`G=\{G_1,G_2,\mathrm{},G_m\}`$, and assume that $`h_i(G_k)2sh_i(G_l)`$ for every $`1k,lm`$, and for every agent $`i`$, then a rationally competitive strategy for agent $`i`$ in the game $`\overline{G}`$ is obtained by performing the competitive strategy of game $`g_i`$ in iterations $`1,2,\mathrm{},n1`$ and performing the rational competitive strategy of the game $`g_n`$ on the last iteration in the sequence.

## 6 One-way trading in multi-agent systems

In the previous section we have discussed competitive analysis for multi-agent systems in the framework of general repeated games and random games. In this section we look at a particular variant of repeated games that extends a well known and fundamental framework for competitive analysis – the one-way trading (see citations in chapter 14 of ).

One way to present the structure of one-way trading is as follows. An agent $`a`$ seeks buying $`X`$ units of a good or of a service. A supplier $`A`$ wishes to supply these units of good to $`a`$. The agents act in an environment that determines the actual payment for a unit of good in a non-deterministic way. For example, the payments might be specified in dollars, but since agent $`A`$ is a British company the actual payoffs it will obtain for providing the good will depend on the exchange ratio of the dollar and the British pound. Formally, the environment announces at each point in time, $`1,2,\mathrm{},t`$, the payoff that will be obtained by agent $`A`$ for supplying a unit of good. The announcements are selected in an unpredicted non-deterministic manner from the interval $`[m,M]`$, where $`M>m>0`$. For example, when $`K`$ is announced at point $`i`$, agent $`A`$ can supply the $`X`$ units of good and obtain a payoff of $`XK`$. Our assumption is that agent $`A`$ will obtain a zero payoff by not providing the units of good. The decision problem that agent $`A`$ faces is as follows: at each point he needs to decide whether he would like to supply the units of good in the current rate. We assume that when agent $`A`$ is willing to provide the service then he will provide and be paid for the whole quantity of goods requested by agent $`a`$ (this property is termed one-way search).

The competitive analysis approach tells agent $`A`$ in the above scenario to minimize his regret value. As it turns out, the competitive strategy in this case will tell the agent to accept the offer (i.e supply the units of good) when the payoff reaches $`\frac{Mm}{2}`$ in stage $`jt1`$, and to accept the offer on stage $`t`$ otherwise.

One-way trading is a typical setting for the use of competitive analysis. We now extend it to the case of several agents, where more than one agent may wish to supply the units of good requested by $`a`$. We will first develop the multi-agent framework without considering the rationality assumption, and then will extend it to the case of rational competitive analysis.

### 6.1 Multi-agent one-way trading

For ease of exposition we consider the case of trading two agents (i.e. two suppliers who can provide the units of good requested by $`a`$): $`A_1`$ and $`A_2`$. The payment offers for the two agents are taken to be independent. For example, agent 1 may be a British company and agent 2 may be a Japanese company, and therefore the actual payment offers for them (from their perspective) will reflect the exchange ratio between the dollar and the British pound, and the exchange ratio between the dollar and the Japanese Yen, respectively. Formally, we have:

###### Definition 6.1

Let $`M_1,M_2,m_1,m_2,t,X=2K`$ be positive integers, where $`M_1>m_1`$ and $`M_2>m_2`$, $`t3`$, and $`X`$ is even. A multi-agent one way trading $`T=N=\{1,2\},X,t,m_1,M_1,m_2,M_2`$ is a random game with the following players, strategies, and payoffs:

1. The players are 1 and 2.
2. There are $`t`$ iterations. Each iteration $`i`$ is associated with a pair of numbers $`(a_1,a_2)`$ where $`m_1a_1M_1`$ and $`m_2a_2M_2`$. At each iteration each agent can ”take” or ”pass”. However, if an agent takes in iteration $`j`$ then both agents can only ”pass” in all iterations $`ji`$.
3. The payoff of each agent in iteration $`i`$ is 0 if it passes; if an agent performs ”take” in iteration $`i`$ then its payoff will be $`a_iX`$ if the other agent passes and $`a_iK`$ if the other agent takes.

Intuitively, ”take” means a decision of accepting the offer, while ”pass” means rejecting it (at the given point). If both agents agree to ”take” then each one of them will supply half of the units (and the payoff will be splitted among the agents). We now show what is the structure of the competitive strategy in a multi-agent one-way trading setting.

###### Theorem 6.1

Given a multi-agent one way trading $`T=N=\{1,2\},X,t,m_1,M_1,m_2,M_2`$, a competitive strategy for agent $`i`$ is as follows:

1. For iterations $`1jt1`$, take iff $`a_i\frac{2M_i+m_i}{4}`$
2. If you arrive at iteration $`t`$ then take.

Basic idea behind proof: Consider iteration $`j`$, $`1jt1`$, and consider the announcement $`a_i=Y`$. Then, by taking in round $`j`$, agent $`i`$ might suffer a regret of $`2M_iK2YK`$ (notice that there is a regret when an agent takes only if the other does not take at that iteration). By not taking in stage $`j`$ agent $`i`$ might suffer a regret of $`2YKm_iK`$ (which is in fact $`max(KY,2YKm_iK)`$). In order to minimize the regret agent $`i`$ will therefore have to take whenever $`Y`$ satisfies that $`2M_iK2YK=2YKm_iK`$, i.e. when $`a_i=\frac{2M_i+m_i}{4}`$. The fact that the regret is minimized in iteration $`t`$ by taking rather than passing is immediate.

### 6.2 Rational competitive analysis for multi-agent one way trading

We now show the result of applying rational competitive analysis to the context of multi-agent one way trading:

###### Theorem 6.2

Given a multi-agent one way trading $`T=N=\{1,2\},X,t,m_1,M_1,m_2,M_2`$, a rational competitive strategy for agent $`i`$ is as follows:

1. For iterations $`1jt1`$, if the other agent, $`k`$, is announced that $`a_k=M_k`$, then take.
2. For iterations $`1jt2`$, if (1) does not hold then take iff $`a_i\frac{2M_i+m_i}{4}`$
3. If (1) does not hold, then in iteration $`t1`$ take iff $`a_i\frac{M_i+m_i}{4}`$.
4. If you arrive at iteration $`t`$ then take.

Basic idea behind proof: Notice that if the other agent, $`k`$, is announced that $`a_k=M_k`$ then taking dominates any other strategy of it. In no other cases we can say that taking or passing in iterations $`1,2,\mathrm{},t1`$ is dominated. Also, in stage $`t`$ passing is dominated by taking. As a result we will get that agent $`i`$ will minimize its regret by taking when $`a_k=M_k`$ or when it arrived in the last iteration. Assume that $`a_i=Y`$ in iteration $`t1`$, then the maximal regret we get by taking is $`M_iK2KY`$, and by passing the maximal regret in this case is $`2KYm_iK`$ (which is in fact $`max(KY,2KYm_iK)`$). This implies that the regret is minimized when $`M_iK2YK=2KYm_iK`$ ), i.e. when $`Y=\frac{M_i+m_i}{4}`$. The other case that refers to iterations $`1,2,\mathrm{},t2`$ will be treated as in the case of (standard) competitive analysis.

## 7 Conclusion

Competitive analysis is a major tool in computer science, which has been used in a variety of contexts. In this paper we have introduced rational competitive analysis. Rational competitive analysis generalizes competitive analysis to the context of multi-agent systems. Moreover, we have shown its use in the context of bidding games and one-way trading, two problems of considerable importance, as well as in the context of general repeated games. Our approach adopts the non-Bayesian normative approach adopted in previous work, but modifies it to incorporate minimal rationality requirements. Such requirements are essential in multi-agent domains. Many of the previous studies in the context of competitive analysis can be naturally extended to multi-agent domains, and then rational competitive analysis can serve as a fundamental tool for the study of these extensions. We see the study of such extensions as a most attractive research topic, and hope that others will join us in addressing this challenge.


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# Reexamination of the Galaxy Formation-Regulated Gas Evolution Model in Groups and Clusters

## 1 Introduction

It has been realized for a decade that the ratio of gas mass to stellar mass in groups and clusters of galaxies is positively correlated with the X-ray gas temperature. This suggests a simple scenario in which galaxy formation was more efficient in groups than in clusters (David et al. 1990). As a consequence, the stellar (gas) mass fraction should decrease (increase) from groups to clusters, resulting in the increasing mass-to-light ratio and X-ray luminosity with X-ray temperature. It seems that these predictions have been well justified by the optical measurements of the mass-to-light ratios (e.g. Girardi et al. 2000) and the X-ray determinations of the gas fractions in clusters (e.g. Mohr, Mathiesen & Evrard 1999; MME), and in particular by the discovery of the steepening of the X-ray luminosity ($`L_\mathrm{x}`$)-temperature ($`T`$) relation for groups and clusters (Henry & Arnaud 1991; Edge & Stewart 1991; David et al. 1993; Wu, Xue & Fang 1999; Xue & Wu 2000 and references therein). Nevertheless, despite these apparent successes, such a simple scenario has received less attention over the past years than the prevailing ‘preheating’ hypothesis. The latter assumes that the gas was preheated by nongravitational processes such as supernovae and AGNs before collapsing into groups and clusters, which raises the gas entropy and makes the warm/hot gas harder to compress (Kaiser 1991). Indeed, the nongravitational heating mechanism can significantly reduce the gas content bound within the virial radii of groups and poor clusters, providing a satisfactory explanation of the observational facts listed above (e.g. Cavaliere, Menci & Tozzi 1997; 1999; Bower et al. 2001). In particular, the subsequent detection of the entropy excess in the centers of groups and clusters by Ponman, Cannon & Navarro (1999) seems to give a convincing support to the preheating hypothesis. Yet, the main difficulty with the preheating model is the unreasonably high efficiency of energy injection into the intragroup/intracluster gas from supernovae (Wu, Fabian & Nulsen 2000; Bower et al. 2001), although additional heating from AGNs might help to alleviate the discrepancy. Furthermore, a uniform preheating of the cosmic baryons to a temperature of $`10^6`$ at high redshifts may make the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest ($`T10^4`$ K) to disappear.

By inheriting the observational evidence that the efficiency of galaxy formation was higher in groups than in clusters, Bryan (2000) proposed that the lowest entropy gas in groups and clusters should be responsible for the formation of stars. Namely, the gas in the central regions of groups and clusters was converted into stars in the early phase of structure formation, and the central gas cavity was refilled with the remaining gas distributed originally at large radii. This latter process brought the higher entropy gas inward and thus raised the central entropy of the gas, providing an alternative explanation of the existence of the entropy floor in the centers of groups and clusters reported by Ponman et al. (1999). The most important issue behind this simple scenario, we believe, is that the distribution and evolution of the gas are incorporated with the formation of the galaxies so that the optical/X-ray properties of the gas and galaxies in groups and clusters can be naturally explained within a unified scheme and without invoking additional heating processes. This galaxy formation-regulated gas evolution (GG) model in groups and clusters has several unambiguous predictions that can be easily tested with current available data or future observations. For example, (1)while the stellar and gas mass fractions vary from groups to clusters, the total baryon (stellar mass + gas mass) fraction in any group or cluster remains a universal value; (2)The mass-to-light ratio is an increasing function of X-ray temperature; (3)Less massive systems (e.g. groups) contain less gas and hence have lower X-ray emission, which is the key issue for the reproductions of the observed $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relation and entropy distribution; (4)Radial profile of the stellar mass fraction should demonstrate a decreasing trend towards large radii, and an opposite situation occurs for that of the gas mass fraction. Of course, whether or not these properties are in quantitative agreement with observations deserves further investigation.

In the pioneering work of Bryan (2000), an overall agreement between the predicted and observed $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relations and entropy distributions has been essentially found, although at low temperature $`T<1`$ keV, the observed $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relation falls below the theoretical prediction. Motivated by these successes and their profound implications for our understanding of the formation and evolution of the galaxies and gas in groups and clusters, we wish to conduct an extensive comparison of the theoretically predicted properties of the intragroup/intracluster gas by the GG model with those revealed by current X-ray observations. These include not only the global dependence of the X-ray luminosity, entropy and gas fraction upon the X-ray temperature $`T`$, but also the internal structures of the intragroup/intracluster gas such as the radial distribution of gas fraction, the X-ray surface brightness profile (slope and core radius parameters), etc. Moreover, some selection effects of current X-ray observations (e.g. the finite extensions of X-ray surface brightness profiles due to background noise, the spectral fitting temperature, etc.) will be taken into account. It is hoped that our comparison would be useful for an eventually conclusive test of the GG model. Throughout this paper we assume a flat cosmological model ($`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM) of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M}=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$ and $`h=0.65`$.

## 2 The Model

### 2.1 Reexamination of the working hypothesis

We begin with a reexamination of the fundamental relationship between the stellar mass fraction $`f_{\mathrm{star}}`$ and X-ray temperature $`T`$ of groups and clusters. Based on three independent studies of 33 groups and clusters in the literature, Bryan (2000) derived the following empirical formula, regardless of the large scatter of the data points especially for low-temperature groups,

$$f_{\mathrm{star}}=(0.042\pm 0.003)\left(\frac{kT}{10\mathrm{keV}}\right)^{0.35\pm 0.06},$$
(1)
where the quoted errors are $`68\%`$ confidence limits. The lack of a large sample of optical/X-ray groups and clusters in which both stellar mass and gas mass are reliably determined out to virial radii $`r_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ hinders us from directly reexamining the validity of this relation. Nevertheless, there exist several indirect ways that may allow us to test the consistency between equation (1) and other independent measurements.

The GG model admits the universality of the baryon fraction $`f_b`$ in different groups and clusters: $`f_b=f_{\mathrm{star}}+f_{\mathrm{gas}}`$. For the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b=0.020h^2`$, we have $`f_b=0.16`$. Therefore, the measurement of the gas fraction $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}`$ in different groups and clusters permits an indirect test of the dependence of the stellar mass fraction upon the X-ray temperature. The major difficulty of this exercise is the determination of total group/cluster mass $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}`$, in which one often needs to extrapolate the available X-ray data within finite detection aperture to virial radii $`r_{\mathrm{vir}}`$, along with the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium. Such an extrapolation may be safely applicable only to X-ray luminous and rich clusters. For this reason, we extract a sample of 45 nearby ($`z<0.1`$), X-ray luminous clusters from MME and Ettori & Fabian (1999; EF). The restriction on cluster redshifts is consistent with the three samples used by Bryan (2000), and also gets rid of the influence of cosmological parameters other than the Hubble constant. These authors have explicitly derived the gas fraction within $`r_{500}`$ where the overdensity $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ of the cluster dark matter with respect to the critical density of the universe is $`\mathrm{\Delta }=500`$. $`r_{500}`$ can be approximately regarded as the virial radius if we notice that the asymptotic gas fractions of rich clusters at large radii remain roughly constant for the conventional isothermal $`\beta `$ model with $`\beta =2/3`$, although the virial radius of a dynamically-relaxed system in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model corresponds to $`\mathrm{\Delta }100`$. We display in Figure 1 the observationally determined gas fraction and the expectation of $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}=0.160.042(kT/10\mathrm{keV})^{0.35}`$ from the empirical formula equation (1) by Bryan (2000). It is apparent that the two results are essentially consistent with each other.

Another independent check of equation (1) is to examine the dependence of the mass-to-light ratio $`M/L`$ upon the X-ray temperature. It follows that the mass-to-light ratio $`M/L`$ can be rewritten as $`M/L=(M/M_{\mathrm{star}})(M_{\mathrm{star}}/L)=\mathrm{{\rm Y}}f_{\mathrm{star}}^1`$, where $`M_{\mathrm{star}}`$ is the total stellar mass of groups/clusters and $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}M_{\mathrm{star}}/L`$, while observations suggest that $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}6.5\mathrm{{\rm Y}}_{}`$ for the dominant population of galaxies in clusters, ellipticals (see Fukugita, Hogan & Peebles 1998). As a result, the mass-to-light ratio should increase with the X-ray temperature according to equation (1). Now, instead of examining the dependence of $`M/L`$ upon $`T`$, we would like to derive the $`f_{\mathrm{star}}`$-$`T`$ relation using the best-fit relation between cluster virial mass and optical luminosity found by Girardi et al. (2000):

$$\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{vir}}}{M_{}h^1}\right)=10^c\left(\frac{L}{L_{}h^2}\right)^d,$$
(2)
where $`c=1.41`$ and $`d=1.32`$ for the fore/background correction based on mean galaxy counts. This yields

$$f_{\mathrm{star}}=10^{c/d}\left(\frac{\mathrm{{\rm Y}}}{h\mathrm{{\rm Y}}_{}}\right)\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{vir}}}{h^1M_{}}\right)^{1+1/d}.$$
(3)
Employing the cosmic virial theorem at $`z=0`$ (e.g. Bryan & Norman 1998)

$$\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{vir}}}{10^{15}M_{}}\right)=\frac{1}{h\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }}}\left(\frac{kT}{1.39\mathrm{keV}}\right)^{3/2},$$
(4)
we have

$$f_{\mathrm{star}}=\left(1.93\times 10^{16}\right)^{1+1/d}10^{c/d}\mathrm{\Delta }^{(11/d)/2}\left(\frac{\mathrm{{\rm Y}}}{h\mathrm{{\rm Y}}_{}}\right)\left(\frac{kT}{10\mathrm{keV}}\right)^{3(1+1/d)/2}.$$
(5)
Finally,

$$f_{\mathrm{star}}=0.025\left(\frac{kT}{10\mathrm{keV}}\right)^{0.36},$$
(6)
in which we have adopted $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}=6.5\mathrm{{\rm Y}}_{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }=200`$. Actually, one can arrive at the essentially same conclusion using the empirical $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}`$-$`T`$ relationship for clusters instead of the cosmic virial theorem equation (4). For example, the best-fit $`M_{200}`$-$`T`$ relation based on the spatially resolved temperature profiles in the estimates of X-ray cluster masses given by Horner, Mushotzky & Scharf (1999) is

$$M_{200}=8.2\times 10^{14}M_{}\left(\frac{kT}{10\mathrm{keV}}\right)^{1.48}.$$
(7)
This yields, when combined with equation (3),

$$f_{\mathrm{star}}=0.028\left(\frac{kT}{10\mathrm{keV}}\right)^{0.36}.$$
(8)
Except the slightly lower amplitudes, both equations (6) and (8) are consistent with equation (1) especially when the large uncertainties in the fitting results \[equations (1), (2) and (7)\] are considered. In Figure 1 we illustrate the resulting gas fraction $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}=0.16f_{\mathrm{star}}`$ using the stellar mass fraction of equation (6). It turns out that the derived gas fraction of rich clusters from $`f_{\mathrm{star}}`$ roughly agrees with that determined from the X-ray observations.

### 2.2 Basic equations

The dark matter distributions in groups and clusters are assumed to be unaffected by the formation of galaxies and follow the universal density profile (Navarro, Frenk & White 1995; NFW):

$$\rho _{\mathrm{DM}}(r)=\frac{\delta _{\mathrm{crit}}\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}}{(r/r_s)(1+r/r_s)^2},$$
(9)
where $`\delta _{\mathrm{crit}}`$ and $`r_s`$ are the characteristic density and length, respectively, and $`\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}`$ is the critical density of the universe. The virial mass is defined as $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}=4\pi r_{\mathrm{vir}}^3\mathrm{\Delta }\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}/3`$, and related to the virial temperature $`T_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ through the cosmic virial theorem equation (4). Following Bryan (2000), we adopt the fitting formula of the $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}`$-$`c`$ relation suggested by numerical simulations: $`c=8.5(M_{\mathrm{vir}}h/10^{15}M_{})^{0.086}`$, where $`c=r_{\mathrm{vir}}/r_s`$ is the concentration parameter. Since the temperature in all the empirical formulae including the $`f_{\mathrm{star}}`$-$`T`$ relation is the so-called spectral temperature $`T_\mathrm{s}`$ rather than the virial temperature $`T_{\mathrm{vir}}`$, an appropriate connection between $`T_\mathrm{s}`$ and $`T_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ should be established in order to make a meaningful comparison to observations. Using hydrodynamic cluster simulations, Mathiesen & Evrard (2001) have recently conducted an extensive comparison of different measures of the intracluster gas temperature including the spectral temperature, the emission-weighted temperature and the mass-weighted (virial) temperature. In particular, it has been shown that $`T_\mathrm{s}`$ is generally lower than $`T_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ for clusters, depending on the bandpass used for spectral fitting. We adopt the best-fit relation between $`T_\mathrm{s}`$ and $`T_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ in the 2.0-9.5 keV band to proceed our numerical computation: $`T_{\mathrm{vir}}=0.91T_\mathrm{s}^{1.10}`$. We have also tested another fitting formula in the 0.5-9.5 keV band, $`T_{\mathrm{vir}}=1.17T_\mathrm{s}^{1.00}`$, and found that our main theoretical predictions remain unchanged. We will omit the subscript ‘s’ in the spectral temperature. Whenever our theoretical predictions are compared with X-ray observations, we always work with the spectral fitting temperature.

For simplicity, we assume that the gas is dissipationless before galaxy formation so that the gas traces the underlying dark matter distribution and satisfies the equation of hydrostatic equilibrium

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dP^0}{dr}}=\rho _{\mathrm{gas}}^0(r){\displaystyle \frac{GM_{DM}(r)}{r^2}};`$ (10)
$`\rho _{\mathrm{gas}}^0(r)=f_b\rho _{\mathrm{DM}}(r).`$ (11)
We use the superscript ‘0’ to denote the quantities before the formation of galaxies in the system. The temperature profile can be obtained by straightforwardly solving the above equations with the boundary restriction $`T^0(r\mathrm{})0`$:

$$kT^0(r)=kT^{}\frac{r}{r_s}\left(1+\frac{r}{r_s}\right)^2_{r/r_s}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{(1+x)\mathrm{ln}(1+x)x}{x^3(1+x)^3}𝑑x,$$
(12)
where $`kT^{}=4\pi G\mu m_p\delta _c\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}r_s^2`$ and $`\mu =0.59`$ is the mean molecular weight. Note that unlike Bryan (2000), we did not choose the pressure-free external boundary condition $`P^0=0`$, i.e. $`T^0=0`$ at $`r=r_{\mathrm{vir}}`$, which would lead the entropy distribution $`S^0=\mathrm{ln}T^0/(n_e^0)^{2/3}`$ to turn over near the boundary. While our boundary restriction $`T^0(r\mathrm{})0`$ seems to be more natural, the validity of equation (10) beyond $`r_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ becomes questionable. In this regard, our requirement of $`T^0(r\mathrm{})0`$ should not be taken too literally, and the key point here is that $`T^0(r)`$ should be a decreasing function of radius near $`r_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ and tend towards zero when $`rr_{\mathrm{vir}}`$.

Galaxy formation is equivalent to removing the central region of radius $`r_0`$ an amount of gas to $`M_{\mathrm{star}}=f_{\mathrm{star}}M_{\mathrm{vir}}`$:

$$M_{\mathrm{gas}}^0(r_0)=0.042\left(\frac{kT}{10\mathrm{keV}}\right)^{0.35}M_{\mathrm{vir}}.$$
(13)
The remaining gas is redistributed by the conservation of gas mass

$$_{r_0}^{\overline{r}}4\pi \mu _em_pn_e^0(x)x^2𝑑x=_0^r4\pi \mu _em_pn_e(x)x^2𝑑x,$$
(14)
where $`\mu _\mathrm{e}=2/(1+X)`$, and $`X=0.768`$ is the hydrogen mass fraction in the primordial abundances of hydrogen and helium. Namely, the central region of radius $`r`$ is refilled with the gas which is originally distributed at larger radii between $`r_0`$ and $`\overline{r}`$. This process transports the gas at $`\overline{r}`$ with entropy $`S^0(\overline{r})=\mathrm{ln}T^0(\overline{r})/[n_e^0(\overline{r})]^{2/3}`$ to a new position $`r`$ by the conservation of entropy

$$\frac{T(r)}{[n_e(r)]^{2/3}}=\frac{T^0(\overline{r})}{[n_e^0(\overline{r})]^{2/3}}.$$
(15)
The original position $`\overline{r}`$ can be thus fixed by combining the above two equations. Eventually, the saturated configuration should satisfy the simple argument

$$M_{\mathrm{gas}}(r_{\mathrm{vir}})+M_{\mathrm{star}}(r_{\mathrm{vir}})=f_bM_{\mathrm{vir}}.$$
(16)
Once the equation of state (equation ) and the saturated configuration (equation ) are specified, we can obtain the newly established gas distribution by solving the following equations:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dP_e}{dr}}={\displaystyle \frac{GM_{DM}(r)}{r^2}}\mu m_p\left({\displaystyle \frac{P_e}{kT}}\right);`$ (17)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{dM_{\mathrm{gas}}}{dr}}=4\pi \mu _em_pr^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{P_e}{kT}}\right),`$ (18)
in which $`P_e=n_ekT`$. The resulting gas density, temperature and entropy distributions are shown in Figure 2 - Figure 4 for various temperatures ranging from 0.5 keV to 14 keV. It appears that both the cores in the gas density profiles and the entropy floors are created in the centers as a result of galaxy formation which has consumed the central gas by converting it into stars. The effect is more significant in lower temperature systems than in higher ones, as was naturally expected. On the other hand, the conservation of entropy during the formation of galaxies leads to a remarkable increase of the gas temperature towards the centers of groups/clusters. Although radiative cooling has not been included in the above treatment, the significantly raised gas temperature in the central regions can help to increase the cooling time which scales as $`T^{1/2}`$. It thus remains to be an interesting issue of whether the combined effect can resolve or release the cooling flow crisis claimed by a number of recent observations with Chandra and XMM (e.g. Fabian et al. 2001). For the latter, the most compelling evidence comes from the X-ray spectra obtained towards the central regions in clusters which show a remarkable lack of emission lines from gas with $`T<1`$ keV (Peterson et al. 2001). One of the suggested mechanisms is that there is an additional transport mechanism that can reheat the cool gas back to the hot phase. In this regard, the formation of galaxies in the central regions which simultaneously raises the temperature of the gas may serve as a natural heating mechanism. Of course, further work should be done to test this speculation.

## 3 Comparison to observations

### 3.1 Radial distribution of gas fraction

Within the framework of the GG model a significant amount of gas in the central regions was converted into galaxies. This would inevitably lead to an increasing gas fraction $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}`$ with group/cluster radius, which should be directly testable by current X-ray observations. For this purpose, we first extract a sample of 163 clusters, which contain 176 data points of $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}`$ measured at different radii, from an X-ray image deprojection analysis made by White, Jones & Forman (1997). Note that for some of the clusters the X-ray temperatures $`T`$ were estimated by the empirical velocity dispersion-temperature correlation. The data points are now divided into three subsamples according to temperature, which contain 42 ($`T>6`$ keV, $`T=7.99`$ keV), 98 ($`3`$ keV $`T6`$ keV, $`T=4.32`$ keV) and 36 ($`T<3`$ keV, $`T=2.36`$ keV) clusters, respectively, and each subsample is properly binned for illustrative purpose. In Figure 5 the radial variations of the observed $`f_{\mathrm{gas}}`$ are compared with the predictions for three choices of $`T=8`$, $`4.3`$ and $`2.4`$ keV. Next, we choose the two group samples of Mulchaey et at. (1996) and Hwang et al. (1999) used in the construction of the $`f_{\mathrm{star}}`$-$`T`$ relation (see equation ) to demonstrate the radial variation of the gas fraction in low-temperature systems. These two samples contain 21 groups with temperature ranging from 0.69 keV to 3.38 keV, and the mean temperature is $`T=1.32`$ keV. The binned data are displayed in Figure 5. It is immediately clear from Figure 5 that there is a fairly good agreement between the model predictions and the observations. The lowest temperature subsample ($`T=2.36`$ keV) of White et al. (1997) is an exception, exhibiting a somewhat lower amplitude than the theoretical expectation. Perhaps, this can be regarded as the most natural explanation of the monotonically increasing gas fraction with radius seen in many X-ray clusters although a detailed analysis should be made for each individual case.

### 3.2 X-ray surface brightness profile: slope and core radius

The X-ray surface brightness profile $`S_\mathrm{x}(r)`$ can be computed straightforwardly in terms of

$$S_\mathrm{x}(r)=\frac{1}{2\pi (1+z)^4}_r^{r_{\mathrm{vir}}}ϵ(T,n_e)\frac{RdR}{\sqrt{R^2r^2}},$$
(19)
where $`z`$ is the cluster redshift, and $`ϵ(T,n_e)`$ is the emissivity which is computed by the Raymond & Smith (1977) model with a metallicity of $`Z=0.3Z_{}`$. The resulting $`S_\mathrm{x}(r)`$ in the 0.5-2.0 keV band for nearby clusters ($`z=0`$) are plotted in Figure 6 for a set of 11 groups/clusters with temperatures ranging from 0.5 to 14 keV. It appears that the overall X-ray surface brightness profiles resemble the conventional $`\beta `$ model in shape. In order to facilitate a comparison with the existing X-ray imaging measurements of groups/clusters, we fit the predicted X-ray surface brightness profiles to the $`\beta `$ model characterized by $`S_\mathrm{x}(r)/S_\mathrm{x}(0)=(1+r^2/r_c^2)^{(3\beta +1/2)}`$, and work out the slope and core radius parameters, $`\beta `$ and $`r_c`$. Since the determinations of $`\beta `$ and $`r_c`$ depend somewhat on the extension of the X-ray surface brightness profile if the the available data extend only out to two or three times the core radius, we truncate each $`S_\mathrm{x}(r)`$ at the maximum radii set by the X-ray surface brightness limits $`S_{\mathrm{limit}}=2\times 10^{14}`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup> arcmin<sup>-2</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> and $`S_{\mathrm{limit}}=2\times 10^{15}`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup> arcmin<sup>-2</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> in the 0.5-2.0 keV band, respectively. These two values have approximately covered the ROSAT limits used in current observations of clusters (e.g. MME). It turns out that all the predicted X-ray surface brightness profiles can be nicely fitted by the $`\beta `$ model, and the best-fit $`\beta `$ and $`r_c`$ values for the two flux limits and different choices of redshifts are plotted against the X-ray temperature in Figure 7 and Figure 8, respectively.

For a comparison with real observations, we extract a sample of 93 clusters and 36 groups from the literature in which the best-fit $`\beta `$ and $`r_c`$ values are explicitly provided. The major sources of references include: for clusters, Rizza et al. (1998), EF, MME, Arnaud & Evrard (1999), Neumannn & Arnaud (1999), Vikhlinin, Forman & Jones (1999) and Jones & Forman (1999); for groups, Mulchaey et al. (1996), Dahlem & Thiering (2000), Helsdon & Ponman (2000) and Takahashi et al. (2000). In most cases, the fittings were performed by excluding the central cooling components, which is compatible with our model without the inclusion of the radiative cooling. The corresponding spectral temperature data are taken from the compilation of Wu et al. (1999) and Xue & Wu (2000).

The theoretically predicted and observationally determined slope and core radius parameters for different X-ray temperatures are compared in Figure 7 and Figure 8, respectively. Regardless of the large dispersion in the observationally determined $`\beta `$ and $`r_c`$ especially for groups, the trend of the slowly increasing $`\beta `$ and $`r_c`$ with $`T`$ is clearly seen, which is consistent with our predictions. In particular, the predicted slope parameter varies from $`\beta 0.3`$ for groups to $`\beta 0.9`$ for very rich clusters, in excellent agreement with current observations. It should be pointed out that the trend towards shallowed surface brightness profiles in low-temperature systems can be attributed to an observational selection effect rather than a property intrinsic to groups/clusters. This can be clearly seen from the overall predicted X-ray surface brightness profiles for systems with different virial masses. Such a property differs significantly from the preheating model in which the flattening of the $`S_\mathrm{x}`$ occurs in a low-temperature system because the preheated gas becomes harder to be trapped in the shallow gravitational potential well (see Cavaliere et al. 1997). We have also plotted in Figure 7 the slope parameters expected in two extreme situations for comparison (cf. Appendix): (1)The isothermal model in which the gas is driven by purely gravitational shocks and (2) the isentropic model in which the gas is preheated and then collapses adiabatically into groups/clusters. The former may correspond to rich clusters, while the latter may be applied to groups under the preheating hypothesis. These two extreme cases give approximately rise to the upper and lower bounds to the $`\beta `$ values.

Whether the increasing slope parameters $`\beta `$ of X-ray surface brightness profiles from groups to cluster seen in current observations is purely an observational selection effect or a property intrinsic to groups/clusters constitutes a crucial test for the GG model. There are at least two major uncertainties in the current $`\beta `$ model fits of the X-ray surface brightness profiles of groups: Firstly, for most groups a single $`\beta `$ model does not provide an adequate description of the observed data, and the fit quality depends sensitively on the modeling of central galaxies, cooling flows or AGNs (e.g. Helsdon & Ponman 2000); Secondly, the X-ray emission of most groups remains undetectable outside radii of typically $`200`$$`400`$ kpc due to the limitation of current detector sensitivity (e.g. Ponman et al. 1996; Mulchaey et al. 1996; Helsdon & Ponman 2000), while the virial radii of galaxy groups with temperature $`T1`$ keV are about $`1`$ Mpc. It seems that current X-ray observations have only probed the central regions other than the whole groups. It is hoped that the high sensitivity measurements with the Chandra X-ray Observatory can provide a robust constraint on the slopes of X-ray surface brightness profiles for groups and poor clusters especially at large radii.

### 3.3 X-ray luminosity - temperature relation

We now come to the global properties of groups and clusters. The first test that Bryan (2000) chose for the GG model is the X-ray luminosity-temperature relation. While the predicted $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relation is essentially consistent with the observed data on cluster scales, there is an apparent disagreement below $`T1`$ keV. This could be due to the small sample of poor clusters and groups and/or the observational selection effect of the finite spatial extensions of X-ray emission set by the X-ray flux-limited surveys. For the latter possibility, we recall that the correction for lost flux falling out the detection aperture has been already made in the computation of $`L_\mathrm{x}`$ for clusters. The situation for the groups with $`\beta 1/2`$ is complicated. In most cases, no aperture correction is made in order to avoid the divergence of total X-ray luminosity (e.g. Ponman et al. 1996; Helsdon & Ponman 2000). It is thus possible that the X-ray luminosity excess on group scales predicted by Bryan (2000) can be reduced simply by excluding the X-ray emission outside the detection aperture implied by the flux limit $`S_{\mathrm{limit}}`$. We now re-examine the $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relation using the catalog of X-ray groups and clusters compiled by Wu et al. (1999) and Xue & Wu (2000). The updated catalog contains 57 groups and 192 clusters whose X-ray temperatures and luminosities are both available. Furthermore, we only account for the X-ray emission within the apertures set by the X-ray surface brightness limits $`S_{\mathrm{limit}}=2\times 10^{14}`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup> arcmin<sup>-2</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> and $`S_{\mathrm{limit}}=2\times 10^{15}`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup> arcmin<sup>-2</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> in the 0.5-2.0 keV band, respectively. It appears that the evaluation of the total X-ray luminosity of clusters is almost unaffected by these aperture limits because the corresponding cutoff radii are close to or beyond the virial radii. For the latter, we simply truncate the clusters at their virial radii. Again, we use the Raymond & Smith (1977) model with a metallicity of $`Z=0.3Z_{}`$ to calculate the X-ray luminosity and plot the resulting $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relation in Figure 9. It turns out that the model matches nicely the observed data over entire temperature range.

### 3.4 Entropy distribution

The last check is the distribution of the central entropy $`S`$ measured at $`0.1r_{200}`$ against the X-ray temperature. We use the updated measurements of $`S(0.1r_{\mathrm{vir}})`$ by Ponman et al. (1999), Lloyd-Davies, Ponman & Cannon (2000) and Xu, Jin & Wu (2001), which contain 67 data points ranging from $`T0.5`$ keV to $`T14`$ keV. We demonstrate the predicted and measured $`S(0.1r_{\mathrm{vir}})`$ in Figure 10, which reinforces the finding of Bryan (2000) that the predicted $`S`$-$`T`$ is consistent with the observed one. A larger sample especially at low temperature end will be needed for a critical test of the model prediction.

## 4 Discussion and conclusions

Using various large data sources of X-ray groups and clusters in the literature, we have made an extensive examination of the properties of the galaxy formation-regulated gas evolution model in groups and clusters, proposed recently by Bryan (2000) as an alternative explanation of the entropy excess and the steepening of the X-ray luminosity-temperature relation in groups and clusters. This model is based on one empirical correlation between the stellar mass fraction $`f_{\mathrm{star}}`$ and temperature $`T`$ and one hypothesis that the lowest entropy gas in the central regions of groups and clusters was converted into stars. The reliability of the $`f_{\mathrm{star}}`$-$`T`$ relation has been justified by other observational facts such as the increasing ratio of gas mass to stellar mass with the X-ray temperature (David et al. 1990), the increasing gas fraction with the X-ray temperature (Figure 1) and the positive correlation between the mass-to-light ratio and the optical luminosity in clusters (Girardi et al. 2000). This suggests a simple scenario that galaxy formation was less efficient in rich clusters than in poor clusters and groups. As for the working hypothesis, the formation of galaxies in the central regions of groups and clusters consumed the central gas and created a gas cavity, which acts as a trigger for an inward gas flow or diffusion. As a consequence, the flat gas core and entropy floor developed in the centers, together with an increasing gas fraction with radius. These predictions are in quantitative agreement with the internal structures of intragroup/intracluster gas revealed by current X-ray observations such as the slope and core distributions characterized by the conventional $`\beta `$ model, the radial variations of the gas mass fraction, and the central entropy distributions measured at $`0.1r_{200}`$. Another success of the model is the reproduction of the X-ray luminosity-temperature relation over a broad temperature range from $`T0.5`$ keV to $`T20`$ keV. Overall, it seems that this simple model without additional heating can satisfactorily account for the existing X-ray observations.

While both the GG model proposed by Bryan (2000) without additional heating and the prevailing preheating model can equally explain the current X-ray observations, there are a number of essential differences which can be used to distinguish between the two scenarios. For example, the GG model admits the universality of the baryon fraction from groups to rich clusters, while in the preheating scenario the baryon fraction increases with temperature because a considerable amount of gas may still reside outside of the virial radii as a result of preheating especially in poor clusters and groups. A precise measurement of the total baryon (stars + gas) fractions in groups and clusters can provide a critical test for the models. Alternatively, the X-ray imaging measurements of the surface brightness profiles of poor clusters and groups are probably the simplest way to disentangle the issue: the GG model predicts that the slope of the X-ray surface brightness profile at large radii remains roughly unchanged from groups to clusters, and the increasing slope with temperature seen in current X-ray observations is purely selection effect due to the limitation of detector sensitivity and background noise. On the contrary, within the framework of the preheating scenario the X-ray surface brightness profiles are intrinsically shallower in groups and poor clusters than in rich clusters, insensitive to observational sensitivity. The high sensitivity X-ray observations of groups with advanced detectors like Chandra should be able to set robust constraints on the slope parameters of the X-ray surface brightness profiles in the outer regions of groups.

Apparently, the GG model still has its own problems that need to be resolved in the future. First, aside from the robustness problem of the empirical relation between stellar mass fraction and X-ray temperature established based on a small sample of local groups and clusters, it is unclear as to how this relation evolves with redshift. The cosmological applications are largely limited if evolutionary effect is not incorporated into the present model. It is unlikely that there is a significant evolution of groups and clusters since $`z1`$ if the inward gas flow or diffusion due to galaxy formation in the central regions ended at the early phase of structure formation. Of course, this depends on how fast the process of inward gas flow or diffusion may take. A related question is: Can one actually observe the process at high-redshift groups and clusters ? Second, the current $`f_{\mathrm{star}}`$-$`T`$ relation indicates that nearly all the gaseous materials in less massive groups and giant galaxies have been converted into stars. If this occurred in the early stage of structure formation, there would be no gas left in small systems. How can one explain the existence of a considerably large fraction of hot gas in clusters if they formed by gravitational aggregation of individual low-mass objects ? One possibility is that the formation of galaxies and the inward gas flow or diffusion in less massive systems proceeded rather slowly and a large fraction of gas had not been converted into stars before they merged with other massive objects. The latter process can raise the gas temperature and thus reduce the efficiency of galaxy formation, according to the $`f_{\mathrm{star}}`$-$`T`$ relation. A sophisticated analysis incorporated with the halo merger rates described by the extended Press-Schechter formalism (Lacey & Cole 1993) may be needed to clarify the issue. Third, the GG model predicts that the temperature profile shows a dramatic increase towards the centers and a significant decline at large radii. Although the inclusion of radiative cooling is expected to reduce somewhat the central X-ray temperature, whether or not this can yield a quantitative agreement with X-ray spectral analysis remains unclear. It is also interesting to explore the possibility of whether or not such a rising temperature towards the centers of clusters can alleviate the cooling flow crisis. Finally, it is worth mentioning that the overall radiative cooling may play an important role in the removal of low-entropy gas in the centers of groups and clusters, giving rise to an equally good explanation of the steepening of the $`L_\mathrm{x}`$-$`T`$ relation for groups and clusters (Muanwong et al. 2001).

Overall, the GG model has seemingly proved very successful at explaining a number of internal and global properties of the intragroup/intracluster gas. If confirmed, this would have profound implications for our understanding of the origin and distribution of the intragroup/intracluster gas, the formation history of group/cluster galaxies, the missing baryons in the universe, and even the formation and evolution of structures in the universe.

We gratefully acknowledge the valuable suggestions and comments by an anonymous referee. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation of China, under Grant No. 19725311 and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, under Grant No. NKBRSF G19990754. In this Appendix we discuss the gas distributions in two extreme cases: the isothermal and isentropic models. The former may work in rich clusters where the gas was mainly heated by gravitational shocks, while the latter may correspond to the intragroup gas which was preheated and then collapsed adiabatically into the gravitational potential wells of the groups. A detailed discussion about the X-ray luminosity-temperature relations in the two models can be found in Balogh et al. (1999). Here, we concentrate on the radial gas density profiles and use a new prescription suggested recently by Eke, Navarro & Steinmetz (2001) for the assignment of the collapse redshift of dark halos. Again, we adopt the NFW profile for a virialized dark halo, and determine its virial temperature in terms of equation (4). In order to fix the free parameters, $`\delta _c`$ or $`r_s`$ or $`c`$ in the NFW profile. The collapse redshift $`z_{\mathrm{coll}}`$ for each halo identified at $`z=0`$ is introduced through (Eke et al. 2001)
$$D(z_{\mathrm{coll}})\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}}(M_\mathrm{s})=\frac{1}{C_\sigma },$$
(1)
where $`C_\sigma 25`$ for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model, $`D`$ is the normalized linear grow factor, for which we take the approximate expression from Carroll, Press & Turner (1992), $`\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}}(M_\mathrm{s})`$ is the so-called modulated rms linear density at mass scale $`M_\mathrm{s}`$:

$$\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}}(M_\mathrm{s})\sigma (M_s)\left[\frac{d\mathrm{ln}\sigma (M_s)}{d\mathrm{ln}M_s}\right],$$
(2)
and $`M_\mathrm{s}`$ is defined as the mass contained within $`r_{\mathrm{max}}=2.17r_s`$ where the circular velocity reaches its maximum and

$$M_s=\frac{0.47M}{\mathrm{ln}(1+c)c/(1+c)}.$$
(3)
We adopt the following parameterization of the power-spectrum of initial fluctuation

$$P(k)=Ak^nT_{\mathrm{CDM}}^2(k),$$
(4)
where $`n`$ is the primordial power spectrum and is assumed to be the Harrison-Zeldovich case $`n=1`$, and $`T_{\mathrm{CDM}}(k)`$ is the transfer function of adiabatic CDM model for which we use the fit given by Bardeen et al. (1986):

$$T_{\mathrm{CDM}}(q)=\frac{\mathrm{ln}(1+2.34q)}{2.34q}[1+3.89q+(16.1q^2)+(5.46q)^3+(6.71q)^4]^{1/4},$$
(5)
where $`q=(k/h\mathrm{Mpc}^1)/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M}h\mathrm{exp}[\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{b}(1+\sqrt{2h}/\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M})]`$ is the shape parameter. Once a power spectrum, $`P(k)`$, is specified, the mass variance becomes

$$\sigma ^2(M)=\frac{1}{2\pi ^2}_0^{\mathrm{}}k^2P(k)W^2(kR)𝑑k,$$
(6)
in which $`W(x)=3(\mathrm{sin}xx\mathrm{cos}x)/x^3`$ is the Fourier representation of the window function. The amplitude $`A`$ in the power spectrum is determined using the rms mass fluctuation on an 8 $`h^1`$ Mpc scale, $`\sigma _8`$, for which we take $`\sigma _8=0.93`$ for our $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model. Finally, the relationship between the NFW profile and its collapse reshift $`z_{\mathrm{coll}}`$ is established if we define a new characteristic density, $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }_s=3M_{\mathrm{vir}}/4\pi r_s^3`$, and set to equal the spherical collapse top-hat density at $`z_{\mathrm{coll}}`$:

$$\stackrel{~}{\rho }_s=\mathrm{\Delta }(z_{\mathrm{zoll}})\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}(z_{\mathrm{coll}}).$$
(7)
I. Isothermal model

We first assume that the hot gas is isothermal with electron number density $`n_e(r)`$ and temperature $`T`$, and is in hydrostatic equilibrium with the underlying gravitational potential dominated by the NFW profile:

$$\frac{GM_{\mathrm{DM}}(r)}{r^2}=\frac{1}{\mu m_pn_e(r)}\frac{d[kTn_e(r)]}{dr}.$$
(8)
A straightforward computation yields an analytic form of the electron density profile (Makino, Sasaki & Suto 1998)

$$n_e(r)=n_e(0)\frac{(1+r/r_s)^{\alpha /(r/r_s)}1}{e^\alpha 1},$$
(9)
where we have adopted the normalized, background-subtracted form in order to ensure the convergence of the X-ray surface brightness, and $`\alpha =4\pi G\mu m_p\delta _c\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}r_s^2/kT`$. In terms of the virial theorem, the $`\alpha `$ parameter reduces to

$$\alpha =\frac{3c}{\mathrm{ln}(1+c)c/(1+c)}.$$
(10)
Here we have assumed that the specific kinetic energy of dark matter particles is equal to that of gas: $`\beta _{\mathrm{spec}}=\sigma ^2/(kT_{\mathrm{vir}}/\mu m_p)=1`$. In turns out from the prescription of the dark halo formation discussed above that $`\alpha `$ is a slowly decreasing function of virial mass or temperature, ranging from 22.5 to 14 for $`10^9M_{}M10^{17}M_{}`$. This is in good agreement with the observationally determined values for clusters (e.g. EF; Wu & Xue 2000).

Once the electron density and temperature are specified for different systems, we can calculate the X-ray surface brightness profile using an optically thin, isothermal plasma emission model by Raymond & Smith (1977). Finally, we fit the predicted X-ray surface brightness profile to the $`\beta `$ model and work out the best-fit $`\beta `$ and $`r_c`$ parameters. It appears that the resulting $`\beta `$ parameter decreases slightly with temperature, as shown in Figure 7. At the high temperature end of $`T>10`$ keV, the predicted slope parameter reaches $`\beta 0.80.9`$, roughly consistent with observed values for very rich clusters.

II. Isentropic model

The specific entropy of the gas can be conveniently defined as

$$S=\frac{kT}{n_e^{\gamma 1}},$$
(11)
where $`\gamma `$ is the polytropic index. In the case of where the gas is accreted adiabatically, $`\gamma =5/3`$. We solve the hydrostatic equilibrium equation by demanding that the entropy of the gas is conserved during accretion. We specify such a boundary condition that the electron number density and temperature at large radii should approach asymptotically the background values $`n_{e,b}`$ and $`T_b`$, respectively. We caution that this last constraint may break down beyond virial radius because of the failure of hydrostatic equilibrium. Therefore, this boundary condition should only be taken to be a reasonable approximation. The electron number density and temperature profiles are

$`n_\mathrm{e}(r)=n_{e,b}\left[1+\alpha _b\left({\displaystyle \frac{\gamma 1}{\gamma }}\right){\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}(1+r/r_\mathrm{s})}{r/r_\mathrm{s}}}\right]^{\frac{1}{\gamma 1}};`$ (12)
$`T(r)=T_b\left[1+\alpha _b\left({\displaystyle \frac{\gamma 1}{\gamma }}\right){\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}(1+r/r_\mathrm{s})}{r/r_\mathrm{s}}}\right],`$ (13)
where

$$\alpha _b=\frac{4\pi G\mu m_\mathrm{p}\delta _\mathrm{c}\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}r_\mathrm{s}^2}{kT_b}=\frac{4\pi G\mu m_\mathrm{p}\delta _\mathrm{c}\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}r_\mathrm{s}^2}{Sn_{e,b}^{\gamma 1}}.$$
(14)
Nevertheless, we use the background-subtracted electron density $`\overline{n}_\mathrm{e}(r)=n_\mathrm{e}(r)n_{\mathrm{e},\mathrm{b}}`$ and temperature $`\overline{T}(r)=T(r)T_b`$ to proceed our calculation of the corresponding X-ray emission, i.e.,

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{n}_\mathrm{e}(r)}{n_{e,b}}}=\left\{\left[1+\alpha _b\left({\displaystyle \frac{\gamma 1}{\gamma }}\right){\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}(1+r/r_\mathrm{s})}{r/r_\mathrm{s}}}\right]^{\frac{1}{\gamma 1}}1\right\};`$ (15)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{T}(r)}{T_b}}=\alpha _b\left({\displaystyle \frac{\gamma 1}{\gamma }}\right){\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}(1+r/r_\mathrm{s})}{r/r_\mathrm{s}}}.`$ (16)
The key parameter that determines the shape of the X-ray surface brightness profile $`S_\mathrm{x}(r)`$ is $`\alpha _b`$. The typical value of $`\alpha _\mathrm{b}`$ in terms of the above evaluations of $`\delta _c`$ and $`r_s`$ for a given halo $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ or $`T_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ is $`\alpha _b4\pi G\mu m_p\delta _c\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}r_s^2/kT_{\mathrm{vir}}10`$ for $`10^9M_{}M10^{17}M_{}`$. We have numerically obtained the profiles of $`S_x(r)`$ for a number of $`\alpha _b`$ and fitted them to the $`\beta `$ model over a radius range of $`0r100r_s`$. The resulting $`\beta `$ starts from $`0.3`$ for $`\alpha _b=10`$ and approaches $`0.4`$ for the extremely large values of $`\alpha _b10^4`$ (see Figure 7). Such a broad range of $`\alpha _b`$ should cover a broad mass range from groups to rich clusters. It appears that the saturated configuration of the isentropically accreted gas in an NFW-like gravitational potential well looks quite shallow and can be well represented by the conventional $`\beta `$ model with $`\beta 0.30.4`$.