HOT GAS HALOS IN EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES AND ENVIRONMENTS

We investigate the dependence of the extended X-ray emission from the halos of optically luminous early-type galaxies on the small-scale (the nearest neighbor distance) and large-scale (the average density inside the 20 nearest galaxies) environments. We cross-match the 3rd Data Release of the Second XMMNewton Serendipitous Source Catalog (2XMMi-DR3) to a volume-limited sample of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7 with $M_r$ < -19.5 and 0.020 < z < 0.085, and find 20 early-type galaxies that have extended X-ray detections. The X-ray luminosity of the galaxies is found to have a tighter correlation with the optical and near infrared luminosities when the galaxy is situated in the low large-scale density region than in the high large-scale density region. Furthermore, the X-ray to optical (r-band) luminosity ratio, $L_X/L_r$, shows a clear correlation with the distance to the nearest neighbor and with large-scale density environment only where the galaxies in pair interact hydrodynamically with seperations of $r_p$ < $r_{vir}$. These findings indicate that the galaxies in the high local density region have other mechanisms that are responsible for their halo X-ray luminosities than the current presence of a close encounter, or alternatively, in the high local density region the cooling time of the heated gas halo is longer than the typical time between the subsequent encounters.