Temperature and heavy-element abundance profiles of cool clusters of galaxies from ASCA

We perform a spatially resolved X-ray spectroscopic study of a set of 18 re laxed clusters of galaxies with gas temperatures below 4 keV. Spectral anal ysis was done using ASCA/SIS data coupled with the spatial information cont ained in ROSAT/PSPC and Einstein/IPC observations. We derive the temperatur e profiles using single-temperature fits and also correct for the presence of cold gas at the cluster centers. For all of the clusters in the sample, we derive Si and Fe abundance profiles. For a few of the clusters, we also derive Ne and S abundance profiles. We present a comparison of the elementa l abundances derived at similar overdensities as well as element mass-to-li ght ratios. We conclude that the preferential accretion of low-entropy, low -abundance gas into the potentials of groups and cold clusters can explain most of the observed trends in metallicity. In addition, we discuss the imp ortance of energy input from Type II supernovae on cluster scaling relation s and on the relation between the observed scatter in the retainment of Typ e Ia supernova products with differences between the epoch of cluster forma tion.