Probing the dark matter profile of hot clusters and the M–T relation with XMM-Newton Original Research Article

We present results based on XMM-Newton observations of a small sample of hot galaxy clusters. Making a full use of XMM-Newton’s spectro-imaging capabilities, we have extracted the radial temperature profile and gas density profile, and with this information, calculated the total mass profile of each cluster (under the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium and spherical symmetry). Comparing the individual scaled total mass profiles, we have probed the universality of rich cluster mass profiles over a wide range of radii (from 0.01 to 0.7 the virial radius). We have also tested the shape of cluster mass profiles by comparing with the predicted profiles from numerical simulations of hierarchical structure formation. We also derived the local mass–temperature (M–T) scaling relation over a range of temperature going from 4 to 9 keV, that we compare with theoretical predictions.