ABSTRACT

With the advent of XMM-Newton and Chandra, it has become possible to map in detail the dominant baryonic component in groups and clusters of galaxies - their hot, X-ray emitting gas. This is enabling a picture to be pieced together of the complex evolutionary history of the baryons in these systems, and of the relationship between the galaxies and the surrounding hot gas. I will discuss some ongoing efforts to map the processes driving baryonic evolution on these scales, with particular emphasis on the most common galaxy environment in the nearby Universe, small groups of galaxies.