Images, structural properties, and metal abundances of galaxy clusters observed with Chandra ACIS-I at 0.1 < z < 1.3

We have assembled a sample of 115 galaxy clusters at 0.1 < z < 1.3 with archived Chandra ACIS-I observations. We present X-ray images of the clusters and make available region files containing contours of the smoothed X-ray emission. The structural properties of the clusters were investigated, and we found a significant absence of relaxed clusters (as determined by centroid shift measurements) at z > 0.5. The slope of the surface brightness profiles at large radii were steeper on average by 15% than the slope obtained by fitting a simple beta-model to the emission. This slope was also found to be correlated with cluster temperature, with some indication that the correlation is weaker for the clusters at z > 0.5. We measured the mean metal abundance of the cluster gas as a function of redshift and found significant evolution, with the abundances dropping by 50% between z = 0.1 and z approximate to 1. This evolution was still present (although less significant) when the cluster cores were excluded from the abundance measurements, indicating that the evolution is not solely due to the disappearance of relaxed, cool core clusters (which are known to have enhanced core metal abundances) from the population at z greater than or similar to 0.5.