We have analyzed the Chandra , BeppoSax , and ROSAT PSPC observations of Abell 754 and report evidence of a soft , diffuse X-ray component .
The emission is peaked in the cluster center and is detected out to 8 arcmin from the X-ray center .
Fitting a thermal model to the combined BeppoSax and PSPC spectra show excess emission below 1 keV in the PSPC and above 100 keV in the BeppoSax PDS .
The source , 26W20 is in the field of view of the PDS .
The addition of a powerlaw with the spectral parameters measured by Silverman et al .
( 1998 ) for 26W20 successfully models the hard component in the PDS .
The remaining excess soft emission can be modeled by either a low temperature , 0.75 - 1.03 keV component , or by a powerlaw with a steep spectral index , 2.3 .
Both additional components provide a statistically significant improvement over a single thermal component .
Adding a non-thermal component is an improvement over the single thermal model with 99.7 % confidence .
However , addition of a second thermal component model provides a much better fit to the data than does the addition of a non-thermal component .
The Chandra temperature map provides a detailed description of the thermal state of the gas on a scale of 100 kpc and larger and does not show any region cooler than 6.9 keV ( 90 % confidence ) within the region where the cool component was detected .
Simulations of the emission from embedded groups are performed and compared with the Chandra temperature map which show groups are a plausible source of \sim 1 keV emission .
The cool component is centrally peaked in the cluster and the gas density and temperature are relatively high arguing against the WHIM as the source of the X-ray emission .
The typical X-ray emission from elliptical galaxies is not high enough to provide the total cool component luminosity , 7.0 \times 10 ^ { 43 } ) ergs s ^ { -1 } .
The peak of the cool component is located between the low frequency radio halos thus arguing against a non-thermal interpretation for the emission based on the synchrotron inverse-Compton model which requires that the non-thermal X-ray and radio emission be co-spatial .
Thus , we conclude that emission from embedded groups is the most likely origin of the cool component in Abell 754 .