We report results from an X-ray study of the Abell 2111 galaxy cluster using the Advanced Satellite for Astrophysics and Cosmology ( ASCA ) and the ROSAT Position Sensitive Proportional Counter ( PSPC ) .
By correcting for the energy-dependent point-spread function of the ASCA instruments , we have examined the temperature structure of the cluster .
The cluster ’ s core within 3 ’ is found to have a temperature of 6.46 \pm 0.87 keV , significantly higher than 3.10 \pm 1.19 keV in the surrounding region of r = 3 - 6 ’ .
This radially decreasing temperature structure can be parameterized by a polytropic index of \gamma \simeq 1.45 .
The X-ray morphology of the cluster appears elongated and clumpy on scales \leq 1 ’ .
These results , together with earlier ROSAT and optical studies which revealed that the X-ray centroid and ellipticity of A2111 shift with spatial scale , are consistent with the hypothesis that the cluster is a dynamically young system .
Most likely , the cluster has recently undergone a merger , which may also be responsible for the high fraction of blue galaxies observed in the cluster .
Alternatively , the temperature structure may also be due to the gravitational potential of the cluster .
We have further measured the emission weighted abundance of the X-ray-emitting intracluster medium as 0.25 \pm 0.14 solar .
This value is similar to those of nearby clusters which do not show a large blue galaxy fraction , indicating that star formation in disk galaxies and subsequent loss to the medium do not drastically alter the average abundance of a cluster .
This is consistent with recent results which indicate that cluster abundances have remained constant since at least z \sim 0.3 .