The baryon fraction in hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy clusters

We study the baryon mass fraction in a set of hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy clusters performed using the Tree+SPH code GADGET-2. We investigate the dependence of the baryon fraction upon radiative cooling, star formation, feedback through galactic winds, conduction and redshift. Both the cold stellar component and the hot X-ray-emitting gas have narrow distributions that, at large cluster-centric distances r greater than or similar to R-500, are nearly independent of the physics included in the simulations. Only the non-radiative runs reproduce the gas fraction inferred from observations of the inner regions ( r approximate to R-2500) of massive clusters. When cooling is turned on, the excess star formation is mitigated by the action of galactic winds, yet not by the amount required by observational data. The baryon fraction within a fixed overdensity increases slightly with redshift, independent of the physical processes involved in the accumulation of baryons in the cluster potential well. In runs with cooling and feedback, the increase in baryons is associated with a larger stellar mass fraction that arises at high redshift as a consequence of more efficient gas cooling. For the same reason, the gas fraction appears less concentrated at higher redshift. We discuss the possible cosmological implications of our results, and find that two assumptions generally adopted, i.e. ( 1) mean value of Y-b = f (b)/(Omega(b)/Omega(m)) not evolving with redshift, and ( 2) a fixed ratio between f(star) and f(gas) independent of radius and redshift, might not be valid. In the estimate of the cosmic matter density parameter, this implies some systematic effects of the order of Delta Omega(m)/Omega(m) less than or similar to + 0.15 for non-radiative runs and Delta Omega(m)/Omega(m) approximate to + 0.05 and less than or similar to - 0.05 for radiative simulations.