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# Early-type galaxies in the SDSS. III. The Fundamental Plane

## 1 Introduction

This is the third of four papers in which the properties of $`9000`$ early-type galaxies, in the redshift range $`0.01z0.3`$ are studied. Paper I (Bernardi et al. 2003a) describes how the sample was selected from the SDSS database. The sample is essentially magnitude limited, and the galaxies in it span a wide range of environments. Each galaxy in the sample has measured values of luminosity $`L`$, size $`R_o`$ and surface brightness $`I_o=(L/2)/R_o^2`$ in four bands ($`g^{}`$, $`r^{}`$, $`i^{}`$ and $`z^{}`$), a velocity dispersion $`\sigma `$, a redshift, and an estimate of the local density. Paper II (Bernardi et al. 2003b) shows that the joint distribution of early-type galaxy luminosities, radii and velocity dispersions is reasonably well fit by a tri-variate Gaussian. It also shows various correlations between pairs of variables, such as the luminosity–velocity dispersion relation, the luminosity–size relation, and the relation between radius and surface brightness. Paper IV (Bernardi et al. 2003c) uses the spectra of these galaxies to provide information on the chemical evolution of the early-type population.

This paper places special emphasis on the Fundamental Plane (FP) relation between size, surface brightness and velocity dispersion. It shows how the FP depends on waveband, color, redshift and environment. In Section 2.1 we compare the results of a maximum likelihood analysis which can account for evolution and selection effects, as well as correlations between errors (e.g., Saglia et al. 2001, and Paper II of this series) and standard regression estimates, which cannot. Section 2.2 checks if the residuals from the plane correlate with any other observables. A discussion of the mass-to-light ratio is provided in Section 2.3. Evidence for weak evolution is presented in Section 2.4, and weak trends with environment are found in Section 2.5. The distribution of the galaxies in our sample in $`\kappa `$-space (Bender, Burstein & Faber 1992) is shown in Section 2.6. We summarize our findings in Section 3.

Except where stated otherwise, we write the Hubble constant as $`H_0=100h\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$, and we perform our analysis in a cosmological world model with $`(\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M},\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda },h)=(0.3,0.7,0.7)`$, where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ are the present-day scaled densities of matter and cosmological constant. In such a model, the age of the Universe at the present time is $`t_0=9.43h^1`$ Gyr. For comparison, an Einstein-de Sitter model has $`(\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M},\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda })=(1,0)`$ and $`t_0=6.52h^1`$ Gyr. We frequently use the notation $`h_{70}`$ as a reminder that we have set $`h=0.7`$. Also, we will frequently be interested in the logarithms of physical quantities. Our convention is to set $`R\mathrm{log}_{10}R_o`$ and $`V\mathrm{log}_{10}\sigma `$, where $`R_o`$ and $`\sigma `$ are effective radii in $`h_{70}^1`$ kpc and velocity dispersions in km s<sup>-1</sup>, respectively.

## 2 The Fundamental Plane

In any given band, each galaxy in our sample is characterized by three numbers: its luminosity, $`L`$, its size, $`R_o`$, and its velocity dispersion, $`\sigma `$. Correlations between these three observables are expected if early-type galaxies are in virial equilibrium, because

$$\sigma _{vir}^2\frac{GM_{vir}}{2R_{vir}}\left(\frac{M_{vir}}{L}\right)R_{vir}\left(\frac{L/2}{R_{vir}^2}\right).$$
(1)
If the size parameter $`R_{vir}`$ which enters the virial theorem is linearly proportional to the observed effective radius of the light, $`R_o`$, and if the observed line-of-sight velocity dispersion $`\sigma `$ is linearly proportional to $`\sigma _{vir}`$, then this relates the observed velocity dispersion to the product of the observed surface brightness and effective radius. Following Djorgovski & Davis (1987), correlations involving all three variables are often called the Fundamental Plane (FP). In what follows, we will show how the surface brightness, $`R_o`$, and $`\sigma `$ are correlated. Because both $`\mu _o2.5\mathrm{log}_{10}[(L/2)/R_o^2]`$ and $`\sigma `$ are distance independent quantities (this assumes that cosmological dimming and K-corrections have been computed correctly), it is in these variables that studies of early-type galaxies are usually presented.

### 2.1 Finding the best-fitting plane

The Fundamental Plane is defined by:

$$\mathrm{log}_{10}R_o=a\mathrm{log}_{10}\sigma +b\mathrm{log}_{10}I_o+c$$
(2)
where the coefficients $`a`$, $`b`$, and $`c`$ are determined by minimizing the residuals from the plane. There are a number of ways in which this is usually done. Let

$`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{log}_{10}R_oa\mathrm{log}_{10}\sigma b\mathrm{log}_{10}I_oc\mathrm{and}`$
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_o`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_1}{(1+a^2+b^2)^{1/2}}}.`$ (3)
Then summing $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1^2`$ over all $`N`$ galaxies and finding that set of $`a`$, $`b`$ and $`c`$ for which the sum is minimized gives what is often called the direct fit, whereas minimizing the sum of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_o^2`$ instead gives the orthogonal fit. Although the orthogonal fit is, perhaps, the more physically meaningful, the direct fit is of more interest if the FP is to be used as a distance indicator.

A little algebra shows that the direct fit coefficients are

$`a`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _{II}^2\sigma _{RV}^2\sigma _{IR}^2\sigma _{IV}^2}{\sigma _{II}^2\sigma _{VV}^2\sigma _{IV}^4}},b={\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _{VV}^2\sigma _{IR}^2\sigma _{RV}^2\sigma _{IV}^2}{\sigma _{II}^2\sigma _{VV}^2\sigma _{IV}^4}},`$
$`c`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{\mathrm{log}_{10}R_o}a\overline{\mathrm{log}_{10}\sigma }b\overline{\mathrm{log}_{10}I_o},\mathrm{and}`$
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_1^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _{II}^2\sigma _{RR}^2\sigma _{VV}^2\sigma _{II}^2\sigma _{RV}^4\sigma _{RR}^2\sigma _{IV}^4\sigma _{VV}^2\sigma _{IR}^4+2\sigma _{IR}^2\sigma _{IV}^2\sigma _{RV}^2}{\sigma _{II}^2\sigma _{VV}^2\sigma _{IV}^4}},`$ (4)
where $`\overline{\mathrm{log}_{10}X}_i\mathrm{log}_{10}X_i/N`$ and $`\sigma _{xy}^2_i(\mathrm{log}_{10}X_i\overline{\mathrm{log}_{10}X})(\mathrm{log}_{10}Y_i\overline{\mathrm{log}_{10}Y})/N`$, and $`X`$ and $`Y`$ can be $`I_o`$, $`R_o`$ or $`\sigma `$. For what follows, it is also convenient to define $`r_{xy}=\sigma _{xy}^2/(\sigma _{xx}\sigma _{yy})`$. The final expression above gives the scatter around the relation. If surface brightness and velocity dispersion are uncorrelated (we will show below that, indeed, $`\sigma _{IV}0`$), then $`a`$ equals the slope of the relation between velocity dispersion and the mean size at fixed velocity dispersion, $`b`$ is the slope of the relation between surface-brightness and the mean size at fixed surface-brightness, and the rms scatter is $`\sigma _{RR}\sqrt{1r_{RV}^2r_{IR}^2}`$. Errors in the observables affect the measured $`\sigma _{xy}^2`$, and thus will bias the determination of the best-fit coefficients and the intrinsic scatter around the fit. If $`ϵ_{xy}`$ is the rms error in the joint measurement of $`\mathrm{log}_{10}X`$ and $`\mathrm{log}_{10}Y`$, then subtracting the appropriate $`ϵ_{xy}^2`$ from each $`\sigma _{xy}^2`$ before using them provides estimates of the error-corrected values of $`a`$, $`b`$ and $`c`$. Expressions for the orthogonal fit coefficients can be derived similarly, although, because they require solving a cubic equation, they are lengthy, so we have not included them here.

Neither minimization procedure above accounts for the fact that the sample is magnitude-limited, and has a cut at small velocity dispersions. In addition, because our sample spans a wide range of redshifts, we must worry about effects which may be due to evolution. The magnitude limit means that we cannot simply divide our sample up into small redshift ranges (over which evolution is negligible), because a small redshift range probes only a limited range of luminosities, sizes and velocity dispersions. To account for all these effects, we use the maximum-likelihood approach (e.g. Saglia et al. 2001) described in Paper II. This method is the natural choice given that the joint distribution of $`M2.5\mathrm{log}_{10}L`$, $`R\mathrm{log}_{10}R_o`$ and $`V\mathrm{log}_{10}\sigma `$ is quite well described by a multivariate Gaussian. The maximum likelihood estimates of the mean values of these variables, and the parameters of the covariance matrix $`𝒞`$ which describes the correlations between these variables are shown in Table 1 of Paper II. What remains is to write down how the covariance matrix changes when we change variables from $`(M,R,V)`$ to $`(\mu ,R,V)`$. Because $`(\mu _o\mu _{})(MM_{})+5(RR_{})`$, the covariance matrix becomes

$``$ $``$ $`\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\sigma _M^2+10\sigma _M\sigma _R\rho _{RM}+25\sigma _R^2& \sigma _R\sigma _M\rho _{RM}+5\sigma _R^2& \sigma _V\sigma _M\rho _{VM}+5\sigma _R\sigma _V\rho _{RV}\\ \sigma _R\sigma _M\rho _{RM}+5\sigma _R^2& \sigma _R^2& \sigma _R\sigma _V\rho _{RV}\\ \sigma _V\sigma _M\rho _{VM}+5\sigma _R\sigma _V\rho _{RV}& \sigma _R\sigma _V\rho _{RV}& \sigma _V^2\end{array}\right)`$ (8)
$``$ $`\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\sigma _\mu ^2& \sigma _R\sigma _\mu \rho _{R\mu }& \sigma _V\sigma _\mu \rho _{V\mu }\\ \sigma _R\sigma _\mu \rho _{R\mu }& \sigma _R^2& \sigma _R\sigma _V\rho _{RV}\\ \sigma _V\sigma _\mu \rho _{V\mu }& \sigma _R\sigma _V\rho _{RV}& \sigma _V^2\end{array}\right).`$ (12)
The coefficients of $``$ are given in Table 1; they were obtained by inserting the values shown in Table 1 of Paper II into the first of the equalities above. Note that $`\mu =2.5\mathrm{log}_{10}I_o`$.

This matrix is fundamentally useful because it describes the intrinsic correlations between the sizes, surface-brightnesses and velocity dispersions of early-type galaxies—the effects of how the sample was selected and observational errors have been accounted for. For example, the coefficients in the top right and bottom left of $``$ are very close to zero, indicating that surface brightness and velocity dispersion are uncorrelated. In addition, the eigenvalues and vectors of $``$ give information about the shape and thickness of the Fundamental Plane. For example, in $`r^{}`$, the eigenvalues are 0.639, 0.179, and 0.052; the smallest eigenvalue is considerably smaller than the other two indicating that, when viewed in the appropriate projection, the plane is quite thin. The associated eigenvector gives the coefficients of the ‘orthogonal’ fit, and the rms scatter around this orthogonal fit is given by the (square root of the) smallest eigenvalue (e.g. Saglia et al. 2001).

If we wish to use the FP as a distance indicator, then we are more interested in finding those coefficients which minimize the scatter in $`R_o`$. This means that we would like to find that pair $`(a,b)`$ which minimize $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1^2`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$ is given by equation (3). A little algebra shows that the solution is given by inserting the maximum likelihood estimates of the scatter in surface-brightnesses, sizes and velocity dispersions into equation (4).

The maximum likelihood $``$ can be used to provide estimates of the direct and orthogonal fit coefficients, as well as the intrinsic scatter around the mean relations (orthogonal to the plane as well as in the direction of $`R_o`$). These are given in Table 2. Although $`b`$ is approximately the same both for the ‘orthogonal’ and the ‘direct’ fits, $`a`$ from the direct fit is always about 25% smaller than from the orthogonal fit. In either case, note how similar $`a`$ and $`b`$ are in all four bands. This similarity, and the fact that the thickness of the FP decreases slightly with increasing wavelength, can be used to constrain models of how different stellar populations (which may contribute more or less to the different bands) are distributed in early-type galaxies. If the direct fit is used as a distance indicator, then the thickness of the FP translates into an uncertainty in derived distances of about 20%.

Table 2 also shows results from the more traditional $`\chi ^2`$fitting techniques, which were obtained as follows. (These fits were not weighted by errors, and the intrinsic scatter with respect to the fits was estimated by subtracting the measurement errors in quadrature from the observed scatter.) Ignoring evolution and selection effects when minimizing $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1^2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_o^2`$, results in coefficients $`a`$ which are about 10% larger than those we obtained from the maximum likelihood method. We have not shown these in the Table for the following reason. If the population at high redshift is more luminous than that nearby, as expected if the evolution is passive, then the higher redshift population would have systematically smaller values of $`\mu _o`$. Since the higher redshift population makes up most of the large $`R_o`$ part of our sample, this could make the Plane appear steeper, i.e., it could cause the best-fit $`a`$ to be biased to a larger value. If we use the maximum-likelihood estimate of how the luminosities brighten with redshift, then we can subtract off the brightening from $`\mu _o`$ before minimizing $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1^2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_o^2`$. This reduces the best-fit value of $`a`$ so that it is closer to that of the maximum likelihood method. The coefficients obtained in this way are labeled ‘$`\chi ^2`$ $``$ Evolution’ in Table 2; they are statistically different from the maximum likelihood estimates, presumably because they do not account for selection effects or for the effects of observational errors. If we weight each galaxy by the inverse of $`S(z_i|M_{},Q)`$ (the selection function defined in Paper II) when minimizing, then this should at least partially account for selection effects. The resulting estimates of $`a`$, $`b`$ and $`c`$ are labeled ‘$`\chi ^2`$ $``$ Evolution $``$ Selection effects’ in Table 2. The small remaining difference between these and the maximum likelihood estimates is likely due to the fact that the likelihood analysis accounts more consistently for errors.

Figure 1 shows the FP in the four SDSS bands. We have chosen to present the plane using the coefficients, obtained using the maximum-likelihood method, which minimize the scatter orthogonal to the plane. (In all cases, the evolution of the luminosities has been subtracted from the surface brightnesses.) The results to follow regarding the shape of the FP, and estimates of how the mean properties of early-types depend on redshift and environment, are independent of which fits we use. A fair number of the galaxies in our sample have velocity dispersion measurements with small S/N (see, e.g., Figure 19 of Paper I). The FP is relatively insensitive to these objects: removing objects with S/N $`<`$ 15 had little effect on the best fit values of $`a`$, $`b`$. Removing objects with small axis ratios also had little effect on the maximum likelihood coefficients.

In principle, the likelihood analysis provides an estimate of the error on each of the derived coefficients. However, this estimate assumes that the parametric Gaussian form is indeed a good fit. Although we present evidence in Paper II that the Gaussian form is indeed good, we emphasize that, when the data set is larger a non-parametric fit should be performed. Therefore, we have estimated errors on the numbers quoted in Table 2 as follows. The large size of our sample allows us to construct many random subsamples, each of which is substantially larger than most of the samples available in the literature. Estimating the elements of the covariance matrix presented in Table 1, and then transforming to get the FP coefficients in Table 2, in each of these subsamples provides an estimate of how well we have determined $`a`$, $`b`$ and $`c`$. (Note that the errors we find in this way are comparable to those sometimes quoted in the literature, even though each of the subsamples we generated is an order of magnitude larger than any sample available in the literature.) Because each subsample contains fewer galaxies than our full sample, this procedure is likely to provide an overestimate of the true formal error for our sample. However, the formal error does not account for the uncertainties in our K-corrections and velocity dispersion aperture corrections (discussed in more detail in Paper I), so an overestimate is probably more realistic.

As a check on the relative roles of evolution and selection effects, we simulated complete and magnitude-limited samples (with a velocity dispersion cut) following the procedures outlined in Appendix A of Paper II. We then estimated the coefficients of the FP in the simulated catalogs using the different methods. The results are summarized in Table 3. When applied to the complete simulations, the $`\chi ^2`$minimization method yields estimates of $`a`$ which are biased high; it yields the input Fundamental Plane coefficients only after evolution has been subtracted from the surface brightnesses. However, in the magnitude limited simulations, once evolution has been subtracted, it provides an estimate of $`a`$ which is biased low, unless selection effects are also accounted for. Note that this is similar to what we found with the data. The maximum-likelihood method successfully recovers the same intrinsic covariance matrix and evolution as the one used to generate the simulations, both for the complete and the magnitude-limited mock catalogs, and so it recovers the same correct coefficients for the FP in both cases. (We have not shown these estimates in the Table.)

A selection of results from the literature is presented in Table 4. Many of these samples were constructed by combining new measurements with previously published photometric and velocity dispersion measurements, often made by other authors. (Exceptions are Jørgensen et al. 1996, Scodeggio 1997, and Colless et al. 2001.) With respect to previous samples, the SDSS sample presented here is both extremely large and homogeneous.

Notice the relatively large spread in published values of $`a`$, and the fact that $`a`$ is larger at longer wavelengths. In contrast, the Fundamental Plane we obtain in this paper is remarkably similar in all wavebands—although our value of $`b`$ is consistent with those in the literature, the value of $`a`$ we find in all wavebands is close to the largest published values. In addition, the eigenvectors of our covariance matrix satisfy the same relations presented by Saglia et al. (2001). Namely, $`\widehat{𝐯}_1=\widehat{R}_oa\widehat{V}b\widehat{I}_o`$, $`\widehat{𝐯}_2\widehat{R}_o/b\widehat{V}(1+b^2)/(ab)+\widehat{I}_o`$ and $`\widehat{𝐯}_3\widehat{R}_o+\widehat{I}_o/b`$. And, when used as a distance indicator, the FP we find is as accurate as most of the samples containing more than $`100`$ galaxies in the literature. Unfortunately, at the present time, we have no galaxies in common with those in any of the samples listed in Table 4, so it is difficult to say why our FP coefficients appear to show so little dependence on wavelength, or why $`a`$ is higher than it is in the literature.

The fact that $`a2`$ means that the FP is tilted relative to the simplest virial theorem prediction $`R_o\sigma ^2/I_o`$. One of the assumptions of this simplest prediction is that the kinetic energy which enters the virial theorem is proportional to the square of the observed central velocity dispersion. Busarello et al. (1997) argue that, in fact, the kinetic energy is proportional to $`\sigma ^{1.6}`$ rather than to $`\sigma ^2`$. Since this is close to the $`\sigma ^{1.5}`$ scaling we see, it would be interesting to see if the kinetic energy scales with $`\sigma `$ for the galaxies in our sample similarly to how it does in Busarello et al.’s sample. This requires measurements of the velocity dispersion profiles of (a subsample of) the galaxies in our sample, and has yet to be done.

Correlations between pairs of observables, such as the Faber–Jackson (1976) relation between luminosity and velocity dispersion, and the Kormendy (1977) relation between the size and the surface brightness, can be thought of as projections of the Fundamental Plane. They are studied in Paper II. The $`\kappa `$–space projection of Bender, Burstein & Faber (1992) is presented in Section 2.6 below.

### 2.2 Residuals and the shape of the FP

Once the FP has been obtained, there are at least two definitions of its thickness which are of interest. If the FP is to be used as a distance indicator, then the quantity of interest is the scatter around the relation in the $`R_o`$ direction only. On the other hand, if the FP is to be used to constrain models of stellar evolution, then one is more interested in the scatter orthogonal to the plane. We discuss both of these below.

The thickness of the FP is some combination of residuals which are intrinsic and those coming from measurement errors. We would like to verify that the thickness is not dominated by measurement errors. The residuals from the FP in the different bands are highly correlated; a galaxy which scatters above the FP in $`g^{}`$ also scatters above the FP in, say, $`z^{}`$. Although the errors in the photometry in the different bands are not completely independent, this suggests that the scatter around the FP has a real, intrinsic component. It is this intrinsic thickness which the maximum likelihood analysis is supposed to have estimated. The intrinsic scatter may be somewhat smaller than the maximum likelihood estimates because there is a contribution to the scatter which comes from our assumption that all early-type galaxies are identical when we apply the K-correction, for which we have not accounted.

All our estimates of the scatter around the FP show that the FP appears to become thicker at shorter wavelengths. Presumably, this is because the light in the redder bands, being less affected by recent star-formation and extinction by dust, is a more faithful tracer of the dynamical state of the galaxy. The orthogonal scatter in our sample, which spans a wide range of environments, is comparable to the values given in the literature obtained from cluster samples (e.g., Pahre et al. 1998); this constrains models of how the stellar populations of early-type galaxies depend on environment. If the direct fit to the FP is used as a distance indicator, then the intrinsic scatter introduces an uncertainty in distance estimates of $`\mathrm{ln}(10)\times 0.09`$ 20%.

Our next step is to check that the FP really is a plane, and not, for example, a saddle. To do this, we should show the residuals from the orthogonal fit as a function of distance along the long axis of the plane. Specifically, if $`X\mathrm{log}_{10}\sigma +(b/a)\mathrm{log}_{10}I_o+(c/a)`$, then

$$X_{FP}X\sqrt{1+a^2}+(\mathrm{log}_{10}R_oaX)\frac{a}{\sqrt{1+a^2}}=\frac{X+a\mathrm{log}_{10}R_o}{\sqrt{1+a^2}},$$
(13)
and we would like to know if the residuals $`\mathrm{\Delta }_o`$ defined earlier correlate with $`X_{FP}`$. A scatter plot of these residuals versus $`X_{FP}`$ is shown in Figure 2 (we have first subtracted off the weak evolution in the surface brightnesses). The symbols superimposed on the scatter plot show the mean value of the residuals and plus and minus three times the error in the mean, for a few small bins along $`X_{FP}`$. The figure shows that the FP is reasonably flat; it is slightly more warped in the shorter wavelenghts.

Given that the FP is not significantly warped, we would like to know if deviations from the Plane correlate with any of the three physical parameters used to define it. When the plane is defined by minimizing with respect to $`\mathrm{log}_{10}R_o`$, there is little if any correlation of the residuals with absolute magnitude, surface brightness, effective radius, axis-ratio, velocity dispersion, or color so we have chosen to not present them here. Instead, Figure 3 shows the result of plotting the residuals orthogonal to the plane when the plane is defined by the orthogonal fit. The residuals show no correlation with $`M`$, $`\mu _o`$, $`\mathrm{log}_{10}R_o`$, or axis ratio (we have subtracted the weak evolution in $`M`$ and $`\mu _o`$ when making the scatter plots). The residuals are anti-correlated with $`\mathrm{log}_{10}\sigma `$ and slightly less anti-correlated with $`(g^{}r^{})`$ color. The correlation with color is due to the fact that velocity dispersion and color are tightly correlated (this correlation is studied in more detail in Paper IV). The correlation with velocity dispersion is not a selection effect, nor is it associated with evolution; we see a similar trend with velocity dispersion in both the complete and the magnitude-limited simulated catalogs.

Figure 4 shows why this happens. The four panels show the FP in four subsamples of the full $`r^{}`$ sample, divided according to velocity dispersion. Notice how the different scatter plots in Figure 4 show sharp cut-offs approximately perpendicular to the x-axis: lines of constant $`\sigma `$ are approximately perpendicular to the x-axis. Whereas the direct fit is not affected by a cut-off which is perpendicular to the x-axis, the orthogonal fit is. Hence, the residuals with respect to the orthogonal fit show a correlation with velocity dispersion, whereas those from the direct fit do not. (Indeed, by using the coefficients provided in Tables 1 and 2, and the definition of the residuals $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_o`$, one can show that $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1|\mathrm{log}_{10}\sigma `$ is proportional to $`\mathrm{log}_{10}\sigma `$, with a constant of proportionality which is close to zero when the parameters for the direct fit are inserted. However, when the parameters for the orthogonal fit are used, then the slope of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }_o|\mathrm{log}_{10}\sigma `$ versus $`\mathrm{log}_{10}\sigma `$ relation is significantly different from zero.)

To illustrate, the solid curves in Figure 4 (the same in each panel) show the maximum likelihood FP for the full sample. The dashed curves show the FP, determined by using the $`\chi ^2`$method to minimize the residuals orthogonal to the plane, in various subsamples defined by velocity dispersion. The panels for larger velocity dispersions show steeper relations. Evidence for a steepening of the relation with increasing velocity dispersion was seen by Jørgensen et al. (1996). Their sample was considerably smaller than ours, and so they ruled the trend they saw as only marginal. Our much larger sample shows this trend clearly. We have already argued that this steepening is an artifact of the fact that lines of constant velocity dispersion are perpendicular to the $`x`$-axis. The maximum-likelihood fit to the subsamples is virtually the same as that for the full sample, provided we include the correct velocity dispersion cuts in the normalization of the likelihood. In other words, the maximum-likelihood fit is able to account for the bias introduced by making a cut in velocity dispersion as well as apparent magnitude.

### 2.3 The mass-to-light ratio

The Fundamental Plane is sometimes used to infer how the mass-to-light ratio depends on different observed or physical parameters. For example, the scaling required by the virial theorem, $`M_oR_o\sigma ^2`$, combined with the assumption that the mass-to-light ratio scales as $`M_o/LM_o^\gamma `$ yields a Fundamental Plane like relation of the form:

$$R_o\sigma ^{2(1\gamma )/(1+\gamma )}I_o^{1/(1+\gamma )}.$$
(14)
The observed Fundamental Plane is $`R_o\sigma ^aI_o^b`$. If the relation above is to describe the observations, then $`\gamma `$ must simultaneously satisfy two relations: $`\gamma =(2a)/(2+a)`$, and $`\gamma =(1+b)/b`$. The values of $`b`$ in the literature are all about $`0.8`$; setting $`\gamma `$ equal to the value required by $`b`$ and then writing $`a`$ in terms of $`b`$ gives $`a=2(1+2b)`$. Most of the values of $`a`$ and $`b`$ in the shorter wavebands reported in the literature (see, e.g., Table 4) are consistent with this scaling, whereas the higher values of $`a`$ found at longer wavelengths are not. Although the direct fits to our sample have small values of $`a`$, the orthogonal fits give high values in all four bands. These fits do not support the assumption that $`M_o/L`$ can be parametrized as a function of $`M_o`$ alone.

Another way to phrase this is to note that, when combined with the virial theorem requirement that $`(M_o/L)\sigma ^2/(R_oI_o)`$, the Fundamental Plane relation $`R_o\sigma ^aI_o^b`$ yields

$$\left(\frac{M_o}{L}\right)_{\mathrm{FP}}\sigma ^{2+a/b}R_o^{(1+b)/b}$$
(15)
(e.g. Jørgensen et al. 1996; Kelson et al. 2000). The quantity on the right hand side is the mass-to-light ratio ‘predicted’ by the Fundamental Plane, if $`\sigma `$ and $`R_o`$ are given, and the scatter in the Fundamental Plane is ignored. This is a function of $`M_o`$ alone only if $`a=2(1+2b)`$. Our orthogonal fit coefficients $`a`$ and $`b`$ are not related in this way. Rather, for our Fundamental Plane, the dependence on $`\sigma `$ in equation (15) cancels out almost exactly: to a very good approximation, we find $`(M_o/L)_{\mathrm{FP}}R_o^{(1+b)/b}R_o^{0.33}`$. Alternatively, a little algebra shows that mass to light ratio is determined by the combination $`(\sigma ^2/I_o)^{0.25}`$. Whether there is a simple physical reason for this is an open question.

In contrast to the predicted ratio, $`(M_o/L)_{\mathrm{FP}}`$, the combination $`R_o\sigma ^2/L`$ is the ‘observed’ mass-to-light ratio. The ratio of the observed value to the FP prediction of equation (15) is $`(R_o/I_o^b\sigma ^a)^{1/b}`$. The scatter in the logarithm of this ratio is $`1/b`$ times the scatter in Fundamental Plane in the direction of $`R_o`$ (i.e., it is the scatter in the quantity we called $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$ in the previous subsections, divided by $`b`$). Inserting the values from Table 2 shows that if the values of $`\sigma `$ and the effective radius in $`r^{}`$ are used to predict the values of the mass-to-light ratio in $`r^{}`$, then the uncertainty in the predicted ratio is 26%. This is larger than the values quoted in the literature for early-type galaxies in clusters (e.g., Jørgensen et al. 1996; Kelson et al. 2000).

Unfortunately, this is somewhat confusing terminology, because the two mass-to-light ratios are not proportional to each other. This can be seen by using the maximum-likelihood results of Table 1 to compute the mean of the observed mass to light ratio $`R_o\sigma ^2/L`$ at fixed predicted $`(M/L)_{\mathrm{FP}}`$, or simply by plotting the two quantities against one another. Figure 5 shows how $`R_o\sigma ^2/L`$ correlates with luminosity, mass $`R_o\sigma ^2`$, velocity dispersion, surface brightness, the ratio predicted by the Fundamental Plane, and color. The different panels show obvious correlations; the maximum likelihood predictions for these correlations can be derived from the coefficients in Table 1: $`(R_o\sigma ^2/L)L^{0.14\pm 0.02}`$, $`(R_o\sigma ^2/L)(R_o\sigma ^2)^{0.22\pm 0.05}`$, $`(R_o\sigma ^2/L)\sigma ^{0.84\pm 0.1}`$, and $`(R_o\sigma ^2/L)R_o^{0.27\pm 0.06}`$. These are shown as dashed lines in the top four panels. A linear fit to the scatter plot in the bottom left panel gives $`(R_o\sigma ^2/L)(M/L)_{\mathrm{FP}}^{0.80\pm 0.05}`$, with an rms scatter around the fit of 0.14: the ratio predicted by the Fundamental Plane is not proportional to the observed ratio. A scatter plot of $`(M/L)_{\mathrm{FP}}`$ against all these quantities is tighter, of course (recall the scatter around the FP has been removed), although some of the slopes are significantly different. For example, $`(M/L)_{\mathrm{FP}}L^{0.16\pm 0.04}`$, $`(M/L)_{\mathrm{FP}}(R_o\sigma ^2)^{0.13\pm 0.03}`$, and $`(M/L)_{\mathrm{FP}}\sigma ^{0.21\pm 0.03}`$: the ‘observed’ and ‘predicted’ slopes of the mass-to-light ratio versus $`\sigma `$ relations are very different. For this reason, one should be careful in interpretting what is meant by the ‘predicted’ mass-to-light ratio. Our own view is that the observed ratio, $`R_o\sigma ^2/L`$ is to be preferred, as it is directly related to observables, and is independent of the fitting procedure used to fit the Fundamental Plane.

### 2.4 The Fundamental Plane: Evidence for evolution?

The Fundamental Plane is sometimes used to test for evolution. This is done by plotting $`R_o`$ versus the combination of $`\mu _o`$ and $`\sigma `$ which defines the Fundamental Plane at low redshift, and then seeing if the high-redshift population traces the same locus as the low redshift population. Figure 6 shows this test for our $`g^{}`$ band sample: solid lines (same in each panel) show the relation which fits the zero-redshift sample; dashed lines show a line with the same slope which best-fits the higher redshift sample. The population at higher redshift is displaced slightly to the left of the low redshift population; the text in the bottom of each panel shows this shift, expressed as a change in the surface brightness $`\mu _o`$. The plot appears to show that, on average, the higher redshift galaxies are brighter, with the brightening scaling approximately as $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu _o2z`$.

How much of this apparent brightening is really due to evolution, and how much is an artifact of the fact that our sample is magnitude limited? To address this, we generated complete and magnitude limited mock galaxy catalogs as described in Appendix A of Paper II, and then performed the same test for evolution. Comparing the shifts in the two simulations allows us to estimate how much of the shift is due to the selection effect. Figure 7 shows the results in our simulated $`g^{}`$ (left) and $`r^{}`$ (right) catalogs. The solid lines in each panel show the zero-redshift relation, and the dotted and dashed lines show lines of the same slope which best-fit the points at low and high redshift, respectively. The text in the bottom shows how much of the shift in $`\mu _o`$ is due to the magnitude limit, and how much to evolution. The sum of the two contributions is the total shift seen in the magnitude limited simulations. Notice that this sum is similar to that seen in the data (Figure 6), both at low and high redshifts, suggesting that our simulations describe the varying roles played by evolution and selection effects accurately. Since the parameters of the simulations were set by the maximum likelihood analysis, we conclude that the likelihood analysis of the evolution in luminosities is reasonably accurate ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu _o1.15z`$) in $`g^{}`$, but we note that this evolution is less than one would have infered if selection effects were ignored ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu _o2z`$).

The importance of selection effects in our sample has implications for another way in which studies of evolution are presented. If galaxies do not evolve, then the FP can be used to define a standard candle, so the test checks if residuals from the FP in the direction of the surface-brightness variable, when plotted versus redshift, follow Tolman’s $`(1+z)^4`$ cosmological dimming law. If Friedmann-Robertson-Walker models are correct, then departures from this $`(1+z)^4`$ dimming trend can be used to test for evolution. This can be done if one assumes that the main effect of evolution is to change the luminosities of galaxies. If so, then evolution will show up as a tendency for the residuals from the FP, in the $`\mu `$ direction, to drift away from the $`(1+z)^4`$ dimming (e.g., Sandage & Perelmuter 1990; Pahre, Djorgovski & de Carvalho 1996).

Figure 8 shows this trend in our dataset. The lowest dashed lines in all panels show the expected $`(1+z)^4`$ dimming; panels on the left/right show results in $`g^{}`$/$`r^{}`$. Consider the top two panels first. The points show residuals with respect to the zero-redshift Fundamental Plane in our sample. The crosses show the median residual in a small redshift bin. The galaxies do not quite follow the expected $`(1+z)^4`$ dimming. The similarity to the $`(1+z)^4`$ dimming argues in favour of standard cosmological models, whereas the small difference from the expected trend is sometimes interpretted as evidence for evolution (e.g., Jørgensen et al. 1999; van Dokkum et al. 1998, 2001; Treu et al. 1999, 2001a,b).

Of course, to correctly quantify this evolution, we must account for selection effects. The dashed lines which lie between the $`(1+z)^4`$ scaling and the data (i.e., the crosses) show how the surface brightness should scale if there were passive evolution of the form suggested by the maximum likelihood analysis, but there were no magnitude limit. That is, if $`M_{}(z)=M_{}(0)Qz`$, then the surface brightnesses should scale as $`(1+z)^{40.92Q}`$. The solid curves show the result of making the measurement in simulated magnitude limited catalogs which include this passive evolution. Notice how different these solid curves are from the dashed curves (they imply $`Q`$ about twice the correct value), but note how similar they are to the data. This shows that about half of the evolution one would naively have infered from such a plot is a consequence of the magnitude limit.

To further emphasize the strength of this effect, we constructed simulations in which there was no evolution whatsoever. We did this by first making maximum likelihood estimates of the joint luminosity, size and velocity dispersion distribution in which no evolution was allowed. (For the reasons discussed earlier, the associated no-evolution Fundamental Plane coefficient $`a`$ is steeper by about 10%.) This was then used to generate mock catalogs in which there is no evolution. The crosses in the bottom panels show the result of repeating the same procedure as in the top panels, but now using the parameters of the no-evolution Fundamental Plane, and the solid line shows the measurement in the no-evolution simulations in which, by construction, the population of galaxies at all redshifts is identical. Therefore, the shifts from the $`(1+z)^4`$ dimming we see in the magnitude limited no-evolution catalogs (solid curves in bottom panels) are entirely due to the magnitude limit. Notice how similar the solid lines from our no-evolution simulations are to the actual data. If we believed there really were no evolution, then the results shown in the bottom panel would lead us to conclude that much of the trend away from the $`(1+z)^4`$ dimming is a selection effect—it is not evidence for evolution.

(The fact that we were able to find a non-evolving population which mimics the observations so well suggests that the population of early-type galaxies at the median redshift of our sample must be rather similar to the population at lower and at higher redshifts. This, in turn, can constrain models of when the stars in these galaxies must have formed.)

We view our no-evolution simulations as a warning about the accuracy of this particular test of evolution. If the evolution is weak, then it appears that the results of this test depend critically on how the catalog was selected, and on what one uses as the fiducial Fundamental Plane. To make this second point, we followed the procedure adopted by many other recent publications. Namely, we assumed that the zero-redshift Fundamental Plane has the shape reported by Jørgensen et al. (1996) for Coma, for which $`a`$ is about 15% smaller than what we find in $`g^{}`$. If no account is taken of selection effects, then the inferred evolution in $`\mu _o`$ results in a value of $`Q`$ which is about a factor of four times larger than the one we report in Table 1!

Our results indicate that inferences about evolution which are based on this test depend uncomfortably strongly on the strength of selection effects, and on what one assumes for the fiducial shape of the Fundamental Plane. In this respect, our findings about the role of, and the need to account for selection effects are consistent with those reported by Simard et al. (1999). While we believe we have strong evidence that the early-type population is evolving, we do not believe that the strongest evidence of this evolution comes from either of the tests presented in this subsection. Nevertheless, it is reassuring that the evolution we see from these Fundamental Plane tests is consistent with that which we estimated using the likelihood analysis in Paper II, and is also consistent with what we use to make our K-corrections. Namely, a passively evolving population which formed the bulk of its stars about 9 Gyrs ago appears to provide a reasonable description of the evolution of the surface brightnesses in our sample.

### 2.5 The Fundamental Plane: Dependence on environment

This section is devoted to a study of if and how the properties of early-type galaxies depend on environment. Paper I describes our working definition of environment—essentially, we use the number of galaxies which are nearby in color-, angular- and redshift-space as an indication of the local density. Our procedure for assigning neighbours is least secure in the lowest redshift bin (typically $`z0.08`$).

Paper I shows that when the number of near neighbours is small, the luminosities, sizes and velocity dispersions all increase slightly as the local density increases, whereas the surface brightnesses decrease slightly, although all these trends are very weak. A more efficient way of seeing if the properties of galaxies depend on environment is to show the residuals from the Fundamental Plane. As we argue below, this efficiency comes at a cost: if the residuals correlate with environment, it is difficult to decide if the correlation is due to changes in luminosity, size or velocity dispersion.

Figure 9 shows the differences between galaxy surface brightnesses and those predicted by the zero-redshift maximum likelihood FP given their sizes and velocity dispersions, as a function of local density. Stars, circles, diamonds, triangles, squares and crosses show averages over galaxies in the redshift ranges $`z0.075`$, $`0.075<z0.1`$, $`0.1<z0.12`$, $`0.12<z0.14`$, $`0.14<z0.18`$ and $`z>0.18`$. Error bars show the error in determining the mean. (For clarity, the symbols have been offset slightly from each other.) The plot shows that the residuals depend on redshift—we have already argued that this is a combination of evolution and selection effects. Notice, that in all redshift bins, the residuals tend to increase as local density increases. This suggests that the mean residual from the Fundamental Plane depends on environment. If the offset in surface brightness is interpretted as evidence that galaxies in denser regions are slightly less luminous than their counterparts in less dense regions, then this might be evidence that they formed at higher redshift. While this is a reasonable conclusion, we should be cautious: because $`\mu _o\mu _{\mathrm{FP}}(R_o,\sigma )=\mathrm{\Delta }_1/b`$, what we have really found is that the residuals in the direction of $`R_o`$ correlate with environment. Because $`\sigma \sigma _{\mathrm{FP}}(R_o,\mu _o)=\mathrm{\Delta }_1/a`$, we might also have concluded that the velocity dispersions of galaxies in dense regions are systematically different from those of galaxies which have the same sizes and luminosities but are in the field. For similar reasons, a plot of the mean residual orthogonal to the plane shows a dependence on environment. (However, the rms scatter in the orthogonal direction of the residuals around the mean residual in each density bin, when plotted as a function of density, shows no trend.) Thus, while the Fundamental Plane suggests that the properties of galaxies depend on environment, it does not say how.

### 2.6 The $`\kappa `$-space projection

Bender et al. (1992) suggested three simple combinations of the three observables:

$`\kappa _1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{log}_{10}(R_o\sigma ^2)}{\sqrt{2}}},`$
$`\kappa _2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{log}_{10}(I_o^2\sigma ^2/R_o)}{\sqrt{6}}},\mathrm{and}`$
$`\kappa _3`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{log}_{10}(I_o^1\sigma ^2/R_o)}{\sqrt{3}}},`$ (16)
which, they argued, correspond approximately to the FP viewed face-on ($`\kappa _2`$$`\kappa _1`$), and the two edge-on projections ($`\kappa _3`$$`\kappa _1`$ and $`\kappa _3`$$`\kappa _2`$). They also argued that their parametrization was simply related to the underlying physical variables. For example, $`\kappa _1`$ mass and $`\kappa _3`$ the mass-to-light ratio. The $`\kappa _1`$$`\kappa _2`$ projection would view the FP face on if $`R_o\sigma ^2/I_o`$; recall that we found $`R_o(\sigma ^2/I_o)^{0.75}`$.

Bender et al.’s choice of parameters was criticized by Pahre et al. (1998) on the grounds that if the effective radius $`R_o`$ is a function of wavelength, then the ‘mass’ becomes a function of wavelength, which is unphysical. On average, the effective radii of the galaxies in our sample do increase with decreasing wavelength (Paper I), so one might conclude that Pahre et al.’s objections are valid. However, recall that we do not use the measured velocity dispersion directly; rather, $`\sigma `$ represents the value the dispersion would have had at some fixed fraction of $`R_o`$. If $`R_o`$ depends on wavelength, and we wish to measure the velocity dispersion at a fixed fraction of $`R_o`$, then one might argue that we should also correct the measured velocity dispersion differently in the different bands. The velocity dispersion decreases with increasing radius. So, if $`R_o`$ is larger in the blue band than the red, then the associated velocity dispersion we should use in the blue band should be smaller than in the red. One might imagine that the combination $`R_o\sigma ^2`$ remains approximately constant after all. Whether or not it does, we have chosen to present the SDSS early-type sample in the $`\kappa `$-space projection introduced by Bender et al.

Figure 10 shows the results for the four SDSS bands. Because the mean surface brightness depends on waveband, we set $`\mathrm{log}_{10}I=0.4(27\mu _o+\mu _o\mu _g)`$ when making the plots, so as to facilitate comparison with Bender et al. (1992) and Burstein et al. (1997). The dashed line in the upper right corner of each panel shows $`\kappa _1+\kappa _2=8`$, what Burstein et al. termed the ‘zone of avoidance’. Had we not accounted for the fact that the mean surface brightness is different in the different bands, then the galaxies would populate this zone.

The magnitude limit is clearly visible in the lower right corner of the $`\kappa _3`$$`\kappa _1`$ projection; we have not made any correction for it. When the sample is split by color, the redder galaxies appear to follow a tighter relation than the bluer galaxies, and they also tend to lie slightly closer to the zone of avoidance. We leave quantifying and interpreting these trends to future work.

## 3 Discussion and conclusions

We have studied the Fundamental Plane populated by $`9000`$ early-type galaxies over the redshift range $`0z0.3`$ in the $`g^{}`$, $`r^{}`$, $`i^{}`$ and $`z^{}`$ bands. If this Fundamental Plane is defined by minimizing the residuals orthogonal to it, then $`R_o\sigma ^{1.5}I_o^{0.77}`$ (see Table 2 for the exact coefficients). The Fundamental Plane is remarkably similar in the different bands (Figure 1), and appears to be slightly warped in the shorter wavebands (Figure 2). Residuals with respect to the direct fit (i.e., the FP defined by minimizing the residuals in the direction of $`\mathrm{log}_{10}R_o`$) do not correlate with either velocity dispersion or color, whereas residuals from the orthogonal fit correlate with both (Figures 3). This correlation with $`\sigma `$ is simply a projection effect (see Figure 4 and related discussion), whereas the correlation with color is mainly due to the fact that color and $`\sigma `$ are strongly correlated (Paper IV). The Fundamental Plane is intrinsically slightly thinner in the redder wavebands. This thickness is sometimes expressed in terms of the accuracy to which the FP can provide redshift-independent distance estimates—this is about 20%. If the thickness is expressed as a scatter in the mass-to-light ratio at fixed size and velocity dispersion, then this scatter is about 30%.

The simplest virial theorem prediction for the shape of the Fundamental Plane is that $`R_o\sigma ^2/I_o`$. This assumes that the observed velocity dispersion $`\sigma ^2`$ is proportional to the kinetic energy $`\sigma _{vir}^2`$ which enters the virial theorem. Busarello et al. (1997) argue that in their data $`\mathrm{log}_{10}\sigma =(1.28\pm 0.11)\mathrm{log}_{10}\sigma _{vir}0.58`$, so that $`\sigma ^{1.5}\sigma _{vir}^{1.92}`$. Since the coefficient of $`\sigma `$ in the Fundamental Plane we find in all four bands is $`1.5`$, it would be interesting to see if the kinetic energy for the galaxies in our sample scales as it did in Busarello et al.’s sample. To do this, measurements of the velocity dispersion profiles of (a subsample of) the galaxies in our sample are required.

Tests for passive luminosity evolution which use the Fundamental Plane are severly affected by selection effects and the choice of the fiducial Fundamental Plane against which to measure the evolution (Figures 68). These tests suggest that the surface brightnesses of galaxies at higher redshifts in our sample are brighter than those of similar galaxies nearby. The amount of brightening is consistent with the luminosity evolution estimated in Paper II.

The way in which galaxies scatter from the Fundamental Plane correlates weakly with their local environment (Figure 9). If this is caused entirely by differences in surface brightness, then galaxies in overdense regions are slightly fainter. If so, then single-age stellar population models suggest that early-type galaxies in denser regions formed at higher redshift. However, it may be that, the velocity dispersions are higher in denser regions (Paper II). A larger sample is necessary to make a more definitive statement.

By the time the Sloan Digital Sky Survey is complete, the uncertainty in the K-corrections, which prevent us at the present time from making more precise quantitative statements about the evolution of the luminosities and colors, will be better understood. In addition, the size of the sample will have increased by more than an order of magnitude. This will allow us to provide a more quantitative study of the effects of environment than we are able to at the present time.

We would like to thank S. Charlot for making his stellar population synthesis predictions for the SDSS filters available to the collaboration and N. Benitez for making his package available. We thank D. Kelson and M. Pahre for helpful discussions.

Funding for the creation and distribution of the SDSS Archive has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, and the Max Planck Society. The SDSS Web site is http://www.sdss.org/.

The SDSS is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium (ARC) for the Participating Institutions. The Participating Institutions are The University of Chicago, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, The Johns Hopkins University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), New Mexico State University, University of Pittsburgh, Princeton University, the United States Naval Observatory, and the University of Washington.


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# XMM-Newton observations of the Perseus Cluster I: The temperature and surface brightness structure

## 1 Introduction

The Perseus cluster of galaxies (Abell 426) is the X-ray brightest nearby cluster (with $`z=0.01756`$, $`1^{}`$ corresponds to $``$30 kpc (29.7 kpc) for $`H_0=50\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$ which we use throughout). It was first reported as an extended X-ray source from UHURU observations (Forman et al. 1972) and first images (Gorenstein et al. 1978; see also Fabian et al. 1974; Wolff et al. 1974; Malina et al. 1978) provided a glimpse of the X-ray structure of Perseus. Detailed X–ray images were obtained with the Einstein IPC (Branduardi–Raymont et al. 1981) and HRI (Fabian et al. 1981), the ROSAT PSPC (Schwarz et al. 1992, Ettori, Fabian, White 1998), HRI (Böhringer et al. 1993) and recently with Chandra (Fabian et al. 2000, Schmidt, Fabian & Sanders, 2002). The cluster has a prominent X–ray surface brightness peak centered on the active galaxy NGC 1275, containing a strong core-dominated radio source (Per A, 3C84) surrounded by a lower surface brightness halo (e.g. Pedlar et al. 1990, Sijbring 1993). Many studies have explored the correlations between X-ray, radio, optical, and ultraviolet emission in the core (see e.g. McNamara, O’Connell & Sarazin 1996 and references therein). The proximity and brightness of the cluster make it a natural target for studies of a relatively relaxed cluster with a cold core. In this contribution, we report preliminary results of the XMM-Newton 50 ksec observations of the Perseus cluster.

The structure of the paper is as follows: in Section 2 we discuss XMM-Newton observations of the cluster, in Section 3 we describe the analysis of the data and present the results, in Section 4 we discuss possible implications of the results, and in Section 5 we summarize our findings. The analysis of the substructure in the very core (less than $`2^{}`$) of the Perseus cluster and details of the heavy element abundance and distribution are beyond the scope of this paper and will be reported in subsequent publications.

## 2 Observations and background subtraction

The core of the Perseus cluster was observed with XMM-Newton on 2001, Jan. 30 with a total integration time of $``$53 ksec (observation ID #00851101). The pointing was centered on NGC 1275 (Fig. 1). We report below on the results obtained with the MOS instrument only. Results from the RGS and PN observations will be reported elsewhere. Calibrated event lists were generated using SAS v5.3. As is known the MOS background has a steady (quiescent) component partly associated with cosmic X–ray background and variable component due to charged particles (e.g. Lumb et al. 2002). To check the level of the variable background component, we used the same tracer as implemented in the SAS task emchain – i.e. the count rate of events with energy deposited in a single pixel higher than a threshold value (“REJECTED\_BY\_GATTI” – in SAS notation). Although there are no obvious spikes in the light curve of such events, the count rate is several times higher than the recommended threshold value for the entire observation, indicating a significantly enhanced background level. Thus a straightforward application of the recommended cleaning procedure (using emchain default settings) would remove essentially all the data. To use the dataset, we had to adopt special procedures to correct for the variable background component. As a first step, the steady component of the background was subtracted using data from blank field observations, provided by the XMM SOC site (background data files are from 2002, Jan., see Lumb et al. 2002). The spectra of all but the central chip were accumulated for MOS1 and MOS2. Assuming that the variable component of the background has a power law shape (in counts/channel space) with the slope of $`B(E)=A\times E^\alpha `$ and using the data in the 11-12 keV range, we calculated the normalization of the variable component. The slope $`\alpha `$ of the variable background spectrum is known to vary from observation to observation and (rather arbitrarily) has been fixed at $`\alpha =0.45`$. We then assumed that the intensity of the variable component per unit area is constant across the detector and corrected all observed spectra for this variable component. The sample source and background spectra for the $`8^{}13.75^{}`$ annulus is shown in Fig. 2. The same procedure applied to the publicly available datasets with the “quiescent” background typically yields a normalization for the additional background component that is at least an order of magnitude lower.

To verify the quality of the background subtraction procedure we used a publicly available 30 ksec observation (OBSID 0100240801) performed $``$14 hours after the end of the Perseus observation. In this observation the background level was still enchanced compared to the quiescent level, although a factor of $``$2 lower than in the Perseus observation. There are no strong sources in this field (apart from the target - a compact source) and it is easier to see how well the background is corrected in the regions far from the center of the field of view. For this data set we repeated exactly the same background correction procedure as for the Perseus observation. The results are shown in Fig. 3. One can see that above $``$4 keV the predicted extra background component matches almost perfectly the accumulated spectrum (corrected for quiescent background). Below 2 keV some residuals are present, but given the brightness of Perseus at these energies (factor 10 to 100 brighter than the background) such residuals have no significant impact on the results of the spectral fits.

The procedure and functions described above are the result of extensive tests with various shapes of the additional background and different methods to determine its normalization. The results reported below were found to be robust to the remaining uncertainties in the background subtraction. Further refinement of the background correction procedure may change slightly some of the numerical values, in particular the maximum gas temperature close to the edge of the field of view by $``$5-10%, but cannot affect any of the principle results in the paper. More subtle features, like the limits on the possible nonthermal emission components, which are in principle attainable with the required statistics are deferred to future work. For the same reason we report only on the MOS observation, for which we achieved the most robust results.

For the subsequent analysis we used MOS data with patterns in the range 0-12 and the recommended value of the flag (XMM\_EA). For the spectral analysis we use one of the MOS response matrixes provided by the XMM SOC (namely “m1\_thin1v9q19t5r5\_all\_15.rsp”) and assume that the same response (corrected for energy dependent vignetting) is applicable for all regions.

## 3 Analysis

Although the cluster is not perfectly symmetric (see Fig. 1) it is illustrative to derive the radial dependence of major parameters, in particular the density, temperature and heavy element abundance, assuming spherical symmetry with the center at NGC 1275.

The radial dependence of the surface brightness is shown in Fig. 4. The dotted line shows the expected profile (taking into account the PSF of the telescope) for a point source plus constant surface brightness. The central excess (within $`10^{\prime \prime }`$) is therefore consistent with being due to the contribution of the unresolved, compact source – the nucleus of NGC 1275.

### 3.1 Spectrum of NGC 1275

Given the XMM-Newton spatial resolution and complicated surface brightness distribution near the cluster core, the precise determination of the NGC 1275 nuclear spectrum is difficult. We used the central $`14^{\prime \prime }`$ (radius) circle and the $`14^{\prime \prime }`$$`28^{\prime \prime }`$ annulus as the source and background regions respectively. The resulting spectrum is shown in Fig. 5. It is fairly well fit with an absorbed ($`N_H=1.2\times 10^{21}\mathrm{cm}^2`$) power law with a photon index of 1.65 and a narrow line at an energy of 6.289 keV (with $`1\sigma `$ confidence interval from 6.276 to 6.313 keV) and an equivalent width of $``$165 eV. The assumption that the line is due to fluorescent emission of neutral iron at 6.4 keV implies a redshift of $`z=0.0176\pm 0.003`$, fully consistent with the optically determined redshift of NGC 1275 $`z=0.01756`$. A significant amount of cold gas and dust is known to be associated with the high velocity (HV) system (Minkowski 1957, see also Conselice, Gallagher, & Wyse 2001), but the excellent agreement between the redshifts of the line and the galaxy indicates that reprocessing by the HV gas does not contribute significantly to the observed spectrum. The 6.7 keV line which is dominant in the cluster gas emission is very weak in the nuclear spectrum, suggesting that background has been subtracted with sufficient accuracy. We conclude that the observed spectrum of the nucleus is consistent with typical AGN spectra. The luminosity of the nucleus derived from the best fit parameters is of the order of $`10^{43}\mathrm{ergs}\mathrm{s}^1`$ in the 0.5–8 keV range and is subject to systematic uncertainties (at the level of 20%) due to background subtraction and PSF correction.

### 3.2 Projected parameters

Spectra were accumulated in a set of annuli centered at NGC 1275. The resulting spectra were fit (in the 0.5–9 keV range) with a single temperature APEC (Smith et al. 2001) model in XSPEC (version 11.2.0; Arnaud 1996) with the gas temperature $`T_e`$, abundance of heavy elements $`Z`$ (relative to the solar values of Anders and Grevesse 1989) and low energy photoelectric absorption column density $`N_H`$ as free parameters. The redshift has been fixed at the optically determined value for NGC 1275: $`z=0.01756`$ (Strauss et al. 1992). The projected radial dependence of all parameters is shown in Fig. 6. The derived value of $`N_H1.21.3\times 10^{21}`$ cm<sup>-2</sup> is comparable with (and even somewhat lower than) the galactic hydrogen column density in this direction $`N_H1.5\times 10^{21}`$ $`cm^2`$ (Dickey & Lockman 1990). No intrinsic absorption is required by the data and no large variations are observed with radius. However we note that, given the uncertainty in the background subtraction procedure described above, it is possible that we systematically underestimate the absorbing column density. The temperature shows a clear decrease from 7 keV at large radii to 3.7 keV near the center of the cluster, except for the very central region which is contaminated by hard emission from the NGC 1275 nucleus. The abundance of heavy elements shows an opposite trend, decreasing (outside the central $`1^{}2^{}`$ region) with distance from the center.

### 3.3 Asymmetric surface brightness substructure

As is clear from Fig. 1 and known from earlier Einstein and ROSAT observations (Branduardi-Raymont et al. 1981), the surface brightness is not symmetric around NGC 1275. In order to further enhance the asymmetric structure, we plot in Fig. 7 the relative deviations of the surface brightness from the azimuthally averaged surface brightness value (i.e. $`[DataModel]/Model`$). The resulting image has been smoothed with a $`2^{\prime \prime }`$ Gaussian. Apart from the complicated structure in the innermost ($``$2) region probably dominated by the interaction of the thermal gas with the central AGN radio lobes (e.g. Böhringer et al., 1993, Churazov et al. 2000, Fabian et al. 2000, 2002) there are two regions of prominent excess emission on large scales – one $``$4-7 west of the center and one $`5^{}`$ east of the center. The same structures were also clearly seen in earlier ROSAT PSPC and HRI images (e.g. Schwarz et al. 1992). The possible nature of these structures is further discussed in Section 4.

### 3.4 Deprojection analysis

The above radial dependencies of the gas parameters are affected by projection effects and the azimuthal asymmetry of the cluster. The first problem can be solved using deprojection analysis. Various flavors of deprojection techniques are frequently used (e.g. Fabian et al. 1981, Kriss, Cioffi & Canizares 1983, McLaughlin 1999). In our analysis we assume spherical symmetry but make no specific assumption about the form of the underlying gravitational potential. We first calculate the surface brightness (in a given energy band) in a set of $`n_a`$ annuli and choose a set of $`n_s`$ spherical shells. The radii of the annuli and shells need not be the same. The gas parameters are assumed to be uniform inside each shell. The outermost radii of the annuli and shells are chosen so that $`r(n_s)<r(n_a)`$. The emissivity of the gas for radii larger than $`r(n_s)`$ is assumed to decline with the radius as a power law with a given slope, namely $`=_0r^4`$. The normalization of this extra component $`_0`$ is an additional free parameter of the model. One can then write a simple expression which describes the contribution of all shells and outer regions from $`r(n_s)`$ to infinity to the surface brightness $`S(j)`$ in a given annulus $`j`$.

$`S(j)={\displaystyle \underset{i=1,n_s}{}}A(i,j)(i)+B(j)_0,`$ (1)
where $`(i)`$ is the emissivity of a given shell. A simple analytical expression for $`A(i,j)`$ and $`B(j)`$ which are functions of the radii of corresponding shell and annulus can be easily written (e.g. Kriss, Cioffi and Canizares 1983, McLaughlin 1999).

We then formulate a least squares problem – what set of emissivities in our set of shells will provide the best description of the surface brightness recorded in our set of annuli:

$`{\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}\left[{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}A(i,j)(i)+B(j)_0S(j)\right]^2/\sigma _j^2`$
$`=min,`$ (2)
where $`\sigma _j`$ is the statistical error associated with the surface brightness in a given annulus. As usual the differentiation of this relation with respect to $`S(j)`$ and $`_0`$ yields a system of linear equations, which can easily be inverted. The properties of the inverse matrix $`C(j,i)`$ (in particular an error enhancement due to ill-conditioned problem) can be easily controlled by making the spherical shells broader. The emissivities of the shells are then expressed through the observed surface brightness distribution as an explicit linear combination:

$`(i)={\displaystyle \underset{j=1,n_a}{}}C(j,i)S(j)`$ (3)
We then accumulate a set of spectra (corrected for the background and vignetting) for each annulus. The emission spectrum associated with each shell can then be calculated as the same linear combination of the observed spectra. Since the whole procedure is linear the (statistical) errors can be propagated straightforwardly. The resulting spectra for every shell are fit with standard models in XSPEC. The radial dependence of the electron density, temperature and heavy element abundance is shown in Fig. 8. As usual for any kind of deprojection analysis the errors on the deprojected values of temperature and abundance are significantly larger than for the projected spectra. However the biggest uncertainty in the deprojected parameters probably comes from the assumption of spherical symmetry. As is clear from Section 3.3 the cluster is significantly asymmetric. Furthermore when deriving the density in a given shell we assume that X–ray emitting gas uniformly fills the volume of the shell. Nonetheless we present below two simple analytical approximations to the density and temperature distributions which crudely characterize the radial behavior of these two parameters (shown in Fig. 8 with the solid lines):

$`n_e={\displaystyle \frac{3.9\times 10^2}{[1+(\frac{r}{80})^2]^{1.8}}}+{\displaystyle \frac{4.05\times 10^3}{[1+(\frac{r}{280})^2]^{0.87}}}\mathrm{cm}^3`$ (4)
where the second term is the density distribution on larger scales taken from Jones & Forman (1999) and shown in Fig. 8 with the dotted line.

$`T_e=7{\displaystyle \frac{[1+(\frac{r}{100})^3]}{[2.3+(\frac{r}{100})^3]}}\mathrm{keV}`$ (5)
The analytical approximations shown in Fig. 8 clearly fail to follow the data in the innermost region (within the central $``$10 kpc). Given the XMM-Newton angular resolution, the major problem here is the contribution from the bright compact source – the nucleus of NGC 1275. This makes Chandra much more suitable for studies of the innermost region.

Schmidt et al. (2002), using Chandra data and excluding the contribution from the nucleus, showed that within about 50 kpc, the deprojected temperature profile is essentially flat (see their Fig. 7) with a mean of approximately 3.1 keV in excellent agreement with the XMM-Newton temperature values from 10-50 kpc (away from the region in which the nuclear source contributes to the XMM-Newton spectral data). The temperature profile derived from the projected Chandra spectra in finer radial bins (Fig. 2 from Schmidt et al. 2002) does however show a slight increase in temperature in the innermost ($`<`$10 kpc) bin. It is possible that projection effects (due to the presence of X–ray “holes” in the inner region) increase somewhat the apparent gas temperature there. Therefore, equation 5, with its essentially constant temperature at $`r<50`$ kpc is a reasonable approximation. A comparison of the azimuthly averaged Chandra surface brightness profile in the inner region with the XMM-Newton data also shows that a gas density profile with a flat core (eq. 4) is a reasonable approximation to the data.

### 3.5 Projected Temperature Structure

To calculate the projected gas temperature distribution, we employed the method described in Churazov et al. (1996, 1999) and applied previously to the ASCA data (e.g. Donnelly et al. 1998, 2001). Briefly we use template spectra corresponding to emission from an optically thin plasma (convolved with the MOS energy response) with temperatures 3 and 9 keV with a given metallicity and low energy photoelectric absorption and determine the best fit weights of these template spectra needed to describe the spectrum $`S(E)`$ observed in a given pixel of the image, i.e.

$`S(E)=AM(T_1,E)+BM(T_2,E),`$ (6)
where $`M(T,E)`$ is the template spectrum for a given value of temperature $`T`$. The temperature is then calculated as a function of the relative weights of the template spectra. As is shown in Churazov et al. (1996) an expectation value of the temperature calculated this way is usually very close (within a few percent) to the temperature obtained by conventional spectral fitting under the assumption of a single temperature plasma with fixed metallicity and absorption. Compared to hardness ratios, typically used for the same purpose, this method is significantly more sensitive. The determination of weights is a linear procedure (i.e. fast) and further smoothing can be applied after the images containing weights are calculated. The resulting temperature map for Perseus is shown in Fig. 9. An adaptive smoothing has been applied to the map in such a way that each value of the temperature has been calculated using regions containing $`10^4`$ counts. Comparison with the results of direct spectral fitting of individual regions shows good agreement with the overall temperature structure.

Compared with the previous ASCA temperature maps (Arnaud et al. 1994, Furusho et al. 2001) XMM-Newton data show the innermost region in much greater detail, while the global asymmetry is broadly consistent with the lower resolution ASCA maps, which cover a much larger area. The temperature structure of the very central region (within $`1^{}2^{}`$) is consistent with the recent Chandra results (Fabian et al. 2000, Schmidt et al. 2002).

On the spatial scales of 1–15 arcminutes, which are particularly well mapped by the XMM-Newton observations, the most remarkable feature of the temperature map is a horseshoe-shaped high temperature region to the West, enveloping the central cooler region. Thus the global east-west asymmetry of the cluster seen in the surface brightness distribution (Fig. 7) is also clearly present in the gas temperature distribution.

If the cluster gas is in a state of a hydrostatic equilibrium then the gas density and temperature should remain constant along the equipotential surfaces set by the gravitating mass. In the example of a spherical or elliptical potential, all features in the observed surface brightness or temperature distribution should reflect the symmetry of the underlying potential. Shocks or strong sound waves (e.g. produced by a merger) may reveal themselves as distinct features in the observed images or temperature maps. The variations of density and temperature in shocks are obviously correlated leading to a positive correlation of the variations in surface brightness images and temperature maps. The observed variations (Fig. 7 and Fig. 9), on the contrary, suggest that in Perseus the variations of the temperature and surface brightness are anticorrelated. One can see that all the most prominent positive features in Fig. 7 correspond to regions of lower (relative to the mean value at the same distance from the center) temperature. To show this more clearly in Fig. 10 we plot side by side the deviations of the surface brightness and temperature from the azimuthally averaged values. The surface brightness image $`I`$ and the temperature map $`T`$ can be further combined in the form of two additional images $`P=T\sqrt{I}`$ and $`S=T/I^{1/3}`$. Since the surface brightness scales as the square of the electron density (i.e. $`In_e^2`$) then $`PTn_e`$ and $`ST/n_e^{2/3}`$. Therefore these two images $`P`$ and $`S`$ can be used to approximately characterize the azimuthal variations of pressure and entropy<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1we use the term entropy for the quantity $`S=T/n_e^{2/3}`$, true specific entropy is determined by the logarithm of this quantity of the gas. These variations are also shown in Fig. 10. It is clear that the relative amplitude of the azimuthal variations in pressure is smaller than that for any of the other quantities shown in Fig. 10 and there is no clear east-west asymmetry in the pressure distribution. This argues against the attribution of the bulk of the observed substructure in the surface brightness distribution and temperature to strong shocks. Instead the observed features clearly resemble edges or “cold fronts” found recently in several clusters (e.g. Markevitch et al. 2000, 2002, Vikhlinin et al. 2001). The possible origin of this substructure is discussed below.

## 4 Discussion

During the lifetime of any cluster, it experiences a few major mergers with another cluster of comparable mass and much more frequent accretion of smaller clusters or groups. A chain of bright optical galaxies extending to the west from NGC 1275 suggests that at present the Perseus cluster is merging with a subcluster coming from that direction. The effect of a merger on the appearance of the cluster obviously depends strongly on the mass ratios and gas fractions of merging clusters (see recent reviews by Evrard & Gioia 2002, Sarazin 2002, Schindler 2002 and references therein). Given that the deviations from spherical symmetry in the surface brightness and temperature, although clearly present, are not very large then we probably have a case of a merger with a relatively small subcluster or group of galaxies. Furthermore the lack of large azimuthal pressure variations (Fig. 10) suggests that we observe the merger in a progressed stage when strong shocks have already left the central region of the cluster mapped with XMM-Newton. The numerical (N-body and fluid dynamics) simulations of the merger most relevant for the Perseus case are probably those of Gomez et al. (2002). Their merger 7 (see Table 1 from Gomez et al., 2002) has a mass ratio 1:16 and small gas fraction for the subcluster so that the cooling flow is not disrupted during the merger. One can see some features in the gas density and temperature distributions in their simulations (Fig. 5 and 6 in Gomez et al., 2002) which are qualitatively similar to the structures found in the Perseus data.

In Perseus the most striking feature is a clear edge in the surface brightness which separates cooler gas in the very core from the hotter horseshoe-shaped region in the West, enveloping the core. One plausible explanation of these structures is a contact discontinuity separating main cluster gas from the gas of the infalling subcluster. The shape of the contact discontinuity depends primarily on the density profiles of colliding clusters. For two identical clusters involved in a head-on merger the contact discontinuity is a plane perpendicular to the line connecting the centers of two clusters and located half way between the centers. In the case of a merger of a rich cluster with smaller and less dense subcluster the contact discontinuity shifts towards the center of the smaller subcluster and bends due to stronger impact of the ram pressure onto the outer regions of the smaller subcluster, giving the infalling gas a conical shape (see e.g. Fig. 5 in Gomez et al. 2002). The presence of a very dense core in the main cluster may reverse this trend and bend the contact discontinuity in the opposite direction so that it will envelop the very core of the main cluster. This behavior is less obvious in the simulations by Gomez et al. (2002) although flattening of the contact discontinuity is definitely seen. Assuming that merger 7 of Gomez et al. (2002) is a close analog of the Perseus merger, one would conclude that the present state of the Perseus cluster corresponds to a time $`0.25`$ Gyr after the core crossing when the contact discontinuity is located within $``$ 200 kpc of the center of the main cluster (upper right panel of their Fig. 4). After 0.5-0.75 Gyr the dense and cold gas of the main cluster rebounds and shifts the bulk of the subcluster gas to larger distances from the center (middle right panel of their Fig. 4).

An alternative explanation of the edge and horseshoe structures in Perseus assumes that the contact discontinuity is located farther away from the cluster core and the observed structures are solely composed from the disturbed gas of the main cluster. If the chain of bright galaxies marks the ongoing accretion direction of very small groups of galaxies, it is possible that (given the richness of Perseus) in each individual merger event the gas of the infalling subcluster is decelerated far from the Perseus core and never comes close to the center. Such a situation resembles the picture of a piston which initially is moving through the gas but then stops. The gas in the core of the Perseus cluster would then see a compression wave (shock) followed by a rarefaction wave. The gas density and temperature increase during the compression phase, but then decrease as the gas reexpands. There should be only a modest increase in the final gas temperature associated with the increase of the entropy in the shock. The velocity of the gas in the core of the main cluster also first increases and then falls back to zero, with the net effect that every volume element of gas is displaced some distance from its initial position. Since the density, temperature and pressure change significantly across the core (particularly in the direction perpendicular to the direction of the compression wave motion) the impact of the passing compression/rarefaction wave will differ in terms of the increase in temperature and the net displacement. If the characteristic amplitude of the wave propagating through the nonuniform medium scales as the square root of the density $`n_e`$ then the amplitude of the initial displacement at a distance $`r`$ from the center $`X(r)`$ scales as $`\sqrt{\frac{1}{n_e(r)}}`$. Therefore the wave would induce a smaller net displacement in the very core region (where the density is the highest), than in the region farther from the core. Such a process can lead to characteristic “horseshoe” structures in the temperature and density distributions that are qualitatively similar to those observed in the Perseus cluster. However the relative amplitude of the displacement $`X(r)/r\sqrt{\frac{1}{n_e(r)r^2}}`$ is a decreasing function of radius for density profiles less steep than $`r^2`$. Therefore the relative amplitude of the displacement in the very core of the cluster will still be strong. The displaced gas in the core will then try to restore hydrostatic equilibrium and oscillate in the potential.

We illustrate the bending of the shock and the induced oscillatory motion of the gas in the core with a simple numerical simulation of a plane compression wave passing through a cluster gas. The simulations were made using the ZEUS-2D code (Stone & Norman 1992a, b). In our simulations we employed an ideal gas equation of state with $`\gamma =5/3`$. Equations 4 and 5 were used for the initial density and temperature distributions. The gravitational potential was calculated from the same density and temperature distributions and assumed to be static. The computational domain spans a $`6\times 4`$ Mpc region and is covered by 600 $`\times `$ 400 grid points. At some distance from the cluster, we modify the gas velocity, density and temperature in a slab 200 kpc wide, to mimic the situation when a piston is first driven into a cluster gas with a Mach number of $``$2 and then stops. The results shown below were obtained from the simulations on a Cartesian grid, while simulations on the cylindrical grid produce qualitatively very similar results.

Snapshots of the gas density distribution at several successive moments of time (0, 0.3, 0.7, 1.6 Gyr from the beginning of the simulations) are shown in Fig. 11. Initially the plane shock bends, when passing through the core, because of the higher pressure and lower temperature in the central region. Shortly after the passage of the wave through the core, the gas distribution is clearly elongated in the direction of motion, with the very core regions experiencing smaller displacements than the outer layers. The gas then begins “sloshing” (this term was introduced in Markevitch, Vikhlinin & Mazzotta 2001, see also Markevitch, Vikhlinin & Forman 2002) in the potential well, which in our case is assumed to be static. To show the structure of the density distribution more clearly, we plot the relative deviation of the gas density from the undisturbed value in Fig. 12. The first frame corresponds to the time when the shock front is passing through the core. Although originally the gas is swept in the direction of the wave propagation, in $``$0.5 Gyr it rebounds and produces excess emission on the opposite side of the core. The relevant time scales for the gas sloshing are probably set by the acoustic cutoff frequency $`w_a`$ and the buoyancy (Brunt-Väisälä) frequency $`N`$, which can be written as

$`w_a={\displaystyle \frac{c_m}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}\mathrm{ln}P}{\mathrm{d}r}}`$ (7)
$`N=\mathrm{\Omega }_K\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\gamma }}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}\mathrm{ln}s}{\mathrm{d}\mathrm{ln}r}}},`$ (8)
where $`s`$ is the gas entropy, $`r`$ is the radius, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_K`$ is the Keplerian frequency at a given radius. The dependence of the acoustic cutoff and the buoyancy frequencies on radius (using the density and temperature profiles according to equations 4 and 5) are shown in Fig. 13.

While strictly speaking these frequencies are determined by the local properties of the gas (and we are interested in global oscillations), it is likely that they set an approximately correct timescale for the gas sloshing. Since these frequencies vary with radius, the gas will slosh with different periods, with the possibility of forming several asymmetric structures at the same time on either side of the core. This is illustrated in Fig. 12 where the deviation of the gas density from the undisturbed value is shown at several times. The structures seen in the density distribution resemble the cold edges or fronts observed by Chandra in many clusters (e.g. Markevitch et al. 2002). The edges in this simulation are due to sloshing of the cluster core gas and are of course transient events, which however can persist for a few Gyr, although their shapes evolve continuously. As usual for oscillatory motion, the gas spends most of the time near one of the points of maximum displacement – i.e. in the configuration favorable for the detection of the disturbed gas as an “edge”.

From Fig. 13, the shortest period of sloshing is on the order of a Gyr. This means that it takes about a 0.5 Gyr for the gas displaced by the initial shock to rebound to the opposite side of the center of the potential and form an edge there. If this mechanism is responsible for the formation of the edge in the Perseus cluster then we can roughly estimate that the initial shock has passed through the core some 0.5 Gyr before. On such time scales the primary wave has enough time to propagate outside the region mapped with XMM-Newton and the disturbed dense gas in the center has enough time to rebound.

In this interpretation the increase of gas entropy on the western side of the cluster (see Fig.10) can be attributed to the initial shock or sequence of shocks. If the gas in that region was originally on the same adiabat as now observed at the eastern side of the cluster then in a single shock interpretation the increase of entropy by $``$50% (estimated from Fig.10) would require a shock with a Mach number of $``$2.6. Assuming that the gravitating mass profile of the Perseus cluster follows the Navarro-Frenk-White profile (Navarro, Frenk & White, 1997) with the parameters obtained by Ettori, De Grandi and Molendi (2002) we can estimate that the free fall velocity reaches a Mach number of 2.6 (for 6.5 keV gas) at a distance of $``$300 kpc from the cluster center. This is of course an upper limit on the velocity of the contact discontinuity, attainable only if the infalling gas is sufficiently dense. Depending on the geometry of the contact discontinuity the forward shock will have a velocity similar to the velocity of the discontinuity (e.g. bow shock) or slightly higher (for a plane parallel shock). Therefore the observed asymmetry in the entropy distribution is only marginally consistent with the assumption that a single shock was responsible for the entropy increase. Multiple small accretion events from roughly the same direction, which can be expected if there is indeed a large scale filament in the direction set by the chain of bright galaxies could more easily provide the observed rise of the entropy.

The motion of the cD galaxy relative to the larger scale potential of the cluster has long been suspected to play a role in clusters with cool and dense cores (e.g. David et al. 1994, Fabian et al. 2001, Markevitch et al. 2001). Since the distinction between the cD potential and cluster potential may be somewhat artificial, one can think instead in terms of perturbations of the potential in the cluster core. The gas can then start sloshing in the disturbed potential (e.g. Markevitch et al. 2001, 2002). We argue above that pure hydrodynamics may cause similar sloshing. What matters is the displacement of the gas relative to hydrostatic equilibrium, which can be achieved either through disturbances in the gas or the gravitating mass. In real mergers, both mechanisms are probably operating.

Markevitch et al. (2001, 2002) suggested that dissipation of the sloshing kinetic energy may be sufficient to offset radiative gas cooling. Assuming that the asymmetry in the surface brightness distribution in the inner 200 kpc region around NGC 1275 directly characterizes the amount of sloshing energy, one can estimate this energy as 10-20% of the thermal energy of the gas. At a radius of 100 kpc, the cooling time is comparable to the sloshing turn around time ($`P=2\pi /w_a`$ or $`P=2\pi /N`$) and at 200 kpc it is several times longer than the sloshing time. Assuming that this energy is dissipated over several sloshing turn around times (and neglecting the fact that part of the energy would be emitted as acoustic waves which escape the region), we conclude that the dissipated energy is not sufficient to offset cooling. However, the magnitudes (for cooling and dissipation) are comparable and one can imagine scenarios where the dissipation of the sloshing kinetic energy plays a more important role. In particular our estimate that the sloshing energy constitutes 10-20% of the thermal energy may be an underestimate.

### 4.1 The fate of the stripped gas

During the merger process the subcluster gas is stripped from the dark matter potential of the infalling subcluster and mixes with the main cluster gas. As was pointed out by Fabian & Daines (1991), the infalling gas does not necessarily pass through a very strong shock during the merger process and therefore the gas may remain on approximately the same adiabat as before the merger. This means that even stripped and decelerated lumps of subcluster gas may continue to move towards the center of the main cluster if their entropy is low enough. Even neglecting mixing with the main cluster gas, this motion can continue only until the lump reaches the radius in the main cluster where the main cluster gas has the same entropy as the lump. In Fig. 14, we plot the entropy (defined as $`T_e/n_e^{2/3}`$) profile of the gas in the Perseus cluster. One can compare the values of the entropy with the characteristic values of the entropy found in clusters and groups (e.g. Ponman, Cannon & Navarro 1999; Lloyd-Davies, Ponman, & Cannon 2000) which exceed $``$100 keV cm<sup>2</sup> even for poor groups. Thus, even if the infalling gas does not pass through a strong shock, which would further increase its entropy, it will find gas with comparable entropy at a distance at least several hundred kpc from the Perseus core. The infalling gas cannot easily penetrate below this radius. Therefore the core of the Perseus cluster is well “protected” against penetration by infalling gas (unless the infalling subcluster itself contains a cool core with low entropy gas).

### 4.2 Mergers in the absence of a dense (cool) core

The picture discussed above assumes that the main cluster contains a very dense (cool) core, while the infalling subcluster does not. In reality, various combinations of these parameters are possible, leading to a wealth of different appearances for mergers. In particular, if the main cluster lacks a dense (cool) core and the entropy of the infalling gas is significantly lower than that of the main cluster, the infalling gas may penetrate deep into the cluster core. The infalling cooler gas will be progressively stripped (Fabian & Daines 1991) from the dark matter halo and partly mixed with the main cluster gas. Even when stripped, the gas remains overdense compared to the main cluster gas and it will keep moving (although more slowly) towards the bottom of the potential well. This would result in a “cool wedge” penetrating deep inside (or even crossing) the main cluster. This kind of structure is probably observed in A1367 (Forman et al. 2003) and in Coma. Both clusters have very high values for the gas entropy in their cores, so it is relatively easy for infalling gas to penetrate the core. Thus the cores in such clusters may appear much more disturbed than the cores of the “cooling flow” clusters, even if the infalling subclusters have similar parameters.

Thus if the main cluster does not have a dense and cool core, the gas from smaller infalling subclusters may penetrate deep into the cluster and mix with the main cluster gas. One can therefore expect the abundance of heavy elements to be more or less uniform throughout the cluster. However when the main cluster has a dense cool core, the infalling gas is stopped before reaching the core and only small lumps from any cool cores in the infalling groups themselves are “allowed” to penetrate deeper. These infalling cool lumps are generally centered on a bright galaxy and are presumably also enriched in metals compared to the bulk of the subcluster gas which is stopped at larger distances from the center of the main cluster. Therefore this process may serve to maintain (or even enhance) the radial abundance gradients observed in many clusters with cool cores.

## 5 Conclusions

We present the first results of the 50 ksec XMM-Newton observations of the Perseus cluster. The surface brightness and the gas temperature maps show a wealth of substructure on all spatial scales.

The inner region ($`1^{}2^{}`$) is clearly disturbed by the interaction of the outflow of relativistic plasma from NGC 1275 with the thermal gas. On larger scales the horseshoe structure of the gas temperature and the surface brightness structure suggest an ongoing merger along the direction defined by a chain of bright (optical) galaxies. The gas from the infalling subcluster may be stripped from the dark matter halo at a large distance from the core of the Perseus cluster, with only compression/rarefaction waves passing through the core of the main cluster. These waves may induce “sloshing” in the gas in the cluster core. As a result an “edge” (or even several edges) in the surface brightness and in the gas temperature distribution may appear.

Similar structures may be present in other clusters with peaked (cool) cores which are presently accreting smaller subclusters (e.g. Centaurus cluster). For clusters without a cool dense core, the situation may be different since the subcluster gas is cool and can penetrate deep inside the core of the main cluster and form a cool wedge of partially stripped and mixed gas (e.g. Coma, A1367).

We thank Jean Ballet, Michael Freyberg, Marat Gilfanov, Sebastian Heinz, Nail Inogamov, Francesco Miniati, Ewald Müller and Rashid Sunyaev for valuable discussions. W. Forman and C. Jones thank MPA for its hospitality during their summer 2002 visits and acknowledge support from the Smithsonian Institution and NASA (NAS 8 39073 and NAG 5 9944). We acknowledge use of the Digital Sky Survey prepared by ST ScI (NASA grant NAG W-2166) from photographic data obtained with support from the National Geographic Society to CIT. This work is based on observations obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and the USA (NASA).