Using the mosaic of nine XMM-Newton observations, we study the hydrodynamic state of the merging cluster of galaxies Abell 3266. The high quality of the spectroscopic data and large field of view of XMM-Netwon allow us to determine the thermodynamic conditions of the intracluster medium on scales of order of 50 kpc. A high quality entropy map reveals the presence of an extended region of low entropy gas, running from the primary cluster core toward the northeast along the nominal merger axis. The mass of the low entropy gas amounts to approximately 2e13 solar masses, which is comparable to the baryonic mass of the core of a rich cluster. We test the possibility that the origin of the observed low entropy gas is either related to the disruption a preexisting cooling core in Abell 3266 or to the stripping of gas from an infalling subcluster companion. We find that both the radial pressure and entropy profiles as well as the iron abundance of Abell 3266 do not resemble those in other known cooling core clusters (Abell 478). Thus we conclude that the low entropy region is subcluster gas in the process of being stripped off from its dark matter halo. In this scenario the subcluster would be falling onto the core of A3266 from the foreground. This would also help interpret the observed high velocity dispersion of the galaxies in the cluster center, provided that the mass of the subcluster is at most a tenth of the mass of the main cluster.
Download