Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-short-options-paper-shared-by-prelims-and-parts-a-and-b-of-the-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2015/s2/3/2/solution

For an isotropic velocity dispersion, . To specify the order-unity structure factor, approximate the gravitating system by a uniform sphere, whose gravitational potential energy is . The virial theorem gives
The numerical value uses and . Different mass profiles change the prefactor, rather than the scaling .
For fully ionized intracluster gas, take mean particle mass with . In the same uniform-sphere virial estimate, replace by to obtain
Alternatively, hydrostatic equilibrium gives . An isothermal gas with density proportional to gives . The supplied radius and temperature do not specify the profile, so the meaningful inference is a mass of order , with the displayed model choices making the coefficient explicit. The high supplied temperature need not yield the same estimate as the galaxy dispersion in a crude single-profile calculation.
The stellar estimate is much smaller:
It counts luminous stellar matter, rather than all matter in the cluster.

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