DYNAMIC S0 GALAXIES. II. THE ROLE OF DIFFUSE HOT GAS

Cold gas loss is thought to be important in star formation quenching and morphological transition during the evolution of S0 galaxies. In high-density environments, this gas loss can be achieved via many external mechanisms. However, in relatively isolated environments, where these external mechanisms cannot be efficient, the gas loss must then be dominated by some internal processes. We have performed Chandra analysis of hot gas in five nearby isolated S0 galaxies, based on the quantitative subtraction of various stellar contributions. We find that all the galaxies studied in the present work are X-ray faint, with the luminosity of the hot gas (L-X) typically accounting for less than or similar to 5% of the expected Type Ia supernova (SN) energy injection rate. We have further compared our results with those from relevant recent papers, in order to investigate the energy budget, cold-hot gas relation, and gas removal from S0 galaxies in isolated environments. We find that elliptical and S0 galaxies are not significantly different in L-X at the low-mass end (typically with K-band luminosity L-K less than or similar to 10(11) L-circle dot,L-K). However, at the high-mass end, S0 galaxies tend to have significantly lower L-X than elliptical galaxies of the same stellar masses, as already shown in previous observational and theoretical works. We further discuss the potential relationship of the diffuse X-ray emission with the cold (atomic and molecular) gas content in the S0 and elliptical galaxies included in our study. We find that L-X/L-K(2) tends to correlate positively with the total cold gas mass (MH2+H I) for cold-gas-poor galaxies with MH2+HI less than or similar to 10(8)M(circle dot), while they anti-correlate with each other for cold-gas-rich galaxies. This cold-hot gas relationship can be explained in a scenario of early-type galaxy evolution, with the leftover cold gas from the precursor star-forming galaxy mainly removed by the long-lasting Type Ia supernova (SN) feedback. The two different trends for cold-gas-rich and cold-gas-poor galaxies may be the results of the initial fast decreasing SN rate and the later fast decreasing mass loading to hot gas, respectively.