Heating of intergalactic gas and cluster scaling relations

X-ray observations of galaxy groups and clusters are inconsistent with the predictions of the simplest hierarchical clustering models, wherein nonbaryonic and baryonic components are assembled together under the sole influence of gravity. These departures are in the sense that the intergalactic medium is hotter and more extended than expected, and become increasingly strong for less massive systems. I model these effects by constructing baseline sequences of hydrostatic polytropic models normalized to observations of high-temperature clusters and numerical simulations, and then transforming them by adding proscribed amounts of heat per particle at the cluster center. I present sequences with a universal value of this heating parameter that simultaneously reproduce recently published observed (gas and total gravitational) mass-temperature and entropy-temperature relations. The required amount of energy injection is consistent with constraints on the number of supernovae needed to account for observed intracluster silicon abundances, provided that energy injection is centrally concentrated. I argue that most of the heating occurred during or after the assembly of the cluster, and not exclusively in precollapse proto-cluster fragments.