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Context. The hot plasma in a galaxy cluster is expected to be heated to high temperatures through shocks and adiabatic compression. The thermodynamical properties of the gas encode information on the processes leading to the thermalization of the gas in the cluster's potential well and on non-gravitational processes such as gas cooling, AGN feedback, shocks, turbulence, bulk motions, cosmic rays and magnetic field. Aims. In this work we present the radial profiles of the thermodynamic properties of the intracluster medium (ICM) out to the virial radius for a sample of 12 galaxy clusters selected from the Planck all-sky survey. We determine the universal profiles of gas density, temperature, pressure, and entropy over more than two decades in radius, from 0.01R 500 to 2 R 500 . Methods. We exploited X-ray information from XMM-Newton and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich constraints from Planck to recover thermodynamic properties out to 2R 500 . We provide average functional forms for the radial dependence of the main quantities and quantify the slope and intrinsic scatter of the population as a function of radius. Results. We find that gas density and pressure profiles steepen steadily with radius, in excellent agreement with previous observational results. Entropy profiles beyond R 500 closely follow the predictions for the gravitational collapse of structures. The scatter in all thermodynamical quantities reaches a minimum in the range [0.2 − 0.8]R 500 and increases outward. Somewhat surprisingly, we find that pressure is substantially more scattered than temperature and density. Conclusions. Our results indicate that once accreting substructures are properly excised, the properties of the ICM beyond the cooling region (R > 0.3R 500 ) follow remarkably well the predictions of simple gravitational collapse and require few non-gravitational corrections.

Aims. We present our analysis of a local (z = 0.04−0.2) sample of 31 galaxy clusters with the aim of measuring the density of the X-ray emitting gas in cluster outskirts. We compare our results with numerical simulations to set constraints on the azimuthal symmetry and gas clumping in the outer regions of galaxy clusters. Methods. We have exploited the large field-of-view and low instrumental background of ROSAT/PSPC to trace the density of the intracluster gas out to the virial radius. We stacked the density profiles to detect a signal beyond r 200 and measured the typical density and scatter in cluster outskirts. We also computed the azimuthal scatter of the profiles with respect to the mean value to look for deviations from spherical symmetry. Finally, we compared our average density and scatter profiles with the results of numerical simulations. Results. As opposed to some recent Suzaku results, and confirming previous evidence from ROSAT and Chandra, we observe a steepening of the density profiles beyond ∼r 500 . Comparing our density profiles with simulations, we find that bibradiative runs predict density profiles that are too steep, whereas runs including additional physics and/or treating gas clumping agree better with the observed gas distribution. We report high-confidence detection of a systematic difference between cool-core and non cool-core clusters beyond ∼0.3r 200 , which we explain by a different distribution of the gas in the two classes. Beyond ∼r 500 , galaxy clusters deviate significantly from spherical symmetry, with only small differences between relaxed and disturbed systems. We find good agreement between the observed and predicted scatter profiles, but only when the 1% densest clumps are filtered out in the ENZO simulations. Conclusions. Comparing our results with numerical simulations, we find that bibradiative simulations fail to reproduce the gas distribution, even well outside cluster cores. Although their general behavior agrees more closely with the observations, simulations including cooling and star formation convert a large amount of gas into stars, which results in a low gas fraction with respect to the observations. Consequently, a detailed treatment of gas cooling, star formation, AGN feedback, and consideration of gas clumping is required to construct realistic models of the outer regions of clusters.