Hot gas in galaxy groups: recent observations

Galaxy groups are the least massive systems where the bulk of baryons begin to be accounted for. Not simply the scaled-down versions of rich clusters following self-similar relations, galaxy groups are ideal systems to study baryon physics, which is important for both cluster cosmology and galaxy formation. We review the recent observational results on the hot gas in galaxy groups. The first part of this paper is on the scaling relations, including x-ray luminosity, entropy, gas fraction, baryon fraction and metal abundance. Compared to clusters, groups have a lower fraction of hot gas around the center (e.g. r < r(2500)), but may have a comparable gas fraction at large radii (e.g. r(2500) < r < r(500)). Better constraints on the group gas and baryon fractions require sample studies with different selection functions and deep observations at r > r(500) regions. The hot gas in groups is also iron-poor at large radii (0.3r(500)-0.7 r(500)). The iron content of the hot gas within the central regions (r < 0.3r(500)) correlates with the group mass, in contrast to the trend of the stellar mass fraction. It remains to be seen where the missing iron in low-mass groups is. In the second part, we discuss several aspects of x-ray cool cores in galaxy groups, including their difference from cluster cool cores, radio AGN heating in groups and the cold gas in group cool cores. Because of the vulnerability of the group cool cores to radio AGN heating and the weak heat conduction in groups, group cool cores are important systems to test the AGN feedback models and the multiphase cool-core models. At the end of the paper, some outstanding questions are listed.