Second webinar of the “Athena X-ray Advances: ASST & ACO Science Webinars”

The second webinar of the  “Athena X-ray Advances: ASST & ACO Science Webinars” takes place on the 23rd of February at 15 CET. François Mernier tells us about unveiling the chemical history of galaxy clusters and the Universe.

Abstract: Despite being the building blocks of rocky planets and even life, metals mostly reside outside galaxies - i.e. within a hot, ionized, X-ray emitting plasma pervading galaxy clusters and groups, and massive ellipticals. The presence of these metals in such volumes constitutes thus a fossil record of the enrichment of the largest-scale structures of our Universe, and measuring the abundance of their chemical elements (via X-ray spectroscopy) in these systems is the key to understanding when, where, and by which physical processes this large-scale enrichment took place. Moreover, the accuracy on specific abundance ratios offered by the most recent generation of X-ray observatories allows us to put constraints on the physics and environment of the (Type Ia and core-collapse) supernovae responsible for the enrichment at cluster scales. Here we will briefly review the most recent achievements in this field (mainly obtained with XMM-Newton, Suzaku, and Hitomi), before showing how high-resolution spectroscopy is offered by future missions - in particular, Athena - will push our understanding of the cycle of baryons and metals to the next level.

The webinar connection details are:

https://zoom.us/j/97761425088?pwd=T0pTanZuT0ZoRXVUbnJ0OHRvRXpQQT09 (Meeting ID: 97761425088. Passcode: 459050).

Further information, including the programme of the first block of this series and code of conduct, is accessible on the dedicated website.