We review the present theoretical and numerical understanding of magnetic field amplification in cosmic large-scale structure, on length scales of galaxy clusters and beyond. Structure formation ...drives compression and turbulence, which amplify tiny magnetic seed fields to the microGauss values that are observed in the intracluster medium. This process is intimately connected to the properties of turbulence and the microphysics of the intra-cluster medium. Additional roles are played by merger induced shocks that sweep through the intra-cluster medium and motions induced by sloshing cool cores. The accurate simulation of magnetic field amplification in clusters still poses a serious challenge for simulations of cosmological structure formation. We review the current literature on cosmological simulations that include magnetic fields and outline theoretical as well as numerical challenges.
X-ray observations of many clusters of galaxies reveal the presence of edges in surface brightness and temperature, known as 'cold fronts.' In relaxed clusters with cool cores, these edges have been ...interpreted as evidence for the 'sloshing' of the core gas in the cluster's gravitational potential. The smoothness of these edges has been interpreted as evidence for the stabilizing effect of magnetic fields 'draped' around the front surfaces. To check this hypothesis, we perform high-resolution magnetohydrodynamics simulations of magnetized gas sloshing in galaxy clusters initiated by encounters with subclusters. We go beyond previous works on the simulation of cold fronts in a magnetized intracluster medium by simulating their formation in realistic, idealized mergers with high resolution ( Delta *Dx ~ 2 kpc). Our simulations sample a parameter space of plausible initial magnetic field strengths and field configurations. In the simulations, we observe strong velocity shears associated with the cold fronts amplifying the magnetic field along the cold front surfaces, increasing the magnetic field strength in these layers by up to an order of magnitude, and boosting the magnetic pressure up to near-equipartition with thermal pressure in some cases. In these layers, the magnetic field becomes strong enough to stabilize the cold fronts against Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, resulting in sharp, smooth fronts as those seen in observations of real clusters. These magnetic fields also result in strong suppression of mixing of high- and low-entropy gases in the cluster, seen in our simulations of mergers in the absence of a magnetic field. As a result, the heating of the core due to sloshing is very modest and is unable to stave off a cooling catastrophe.
We present a high-resolution set of adiabatic binary galaxy cluster merger simulations using FLASH. These are the highest resolution simulations to date of such mergers using an adaptive mesh ...refinement grid-based code with Eulerian hydrodynamics. In this first paper in a series, we investigate the effects of merging on the entropy of the hot intracluster gas, specifically with regard to the ability of merging to heat and disrupt cluster 'cool cores.' We find, in line with recent works, that the effect of fluid instabilities that are well resolved in grid-based codes is to significantly mix the gases of the two clusters and to significantly increase the entropy of the gas of the final merger remnant. This result is characteristic of mergers over a range of initial mass ratio and impact parameter. In line with this, we find that the kinetic energy associated with random motions is higher in our merger remnants which have high-entropy floors, indicating that the motions have efficiently mixed the gas and heated the cluster core with gas of initially high entropy. We examine the implications of this result for the maintenance of high-entropy floors in the centers of galaxy clusters and the derivation of the properties of dark matter from the thermal properties of the X-ray-emitting gas.
We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer observations of the brightest cluster galaxy in Abell 2597, a nearby (z = 0.0821) cool core cluster of ...galaxies. The data map the kinematics of a three billion solar mass filamentary nebula that spans the innermost 30 kpc of the galaxy's core. Its warm ionized and cold molecular components are both cospatial and comoving, consistent with the hypothesis that the optical nebula traces the warm envelopes of many cold molecular clouds that drift in the velocity field of the hot X-ray atmosphere. The clouds are not in dynamical equilibrium, and instead show evidence for inflow toward the central supermassive black hole, outflow along the jets it launches, and uplift by the buoyant hot bubbles those jets inflate. The entire scenario is therefore consistent with a galaxy-spanning "fountain," wherein cold gas clouds drain into the black hole accretion reservoir, powering jets and bubbles that uplift a cooling plume of low-entropy multiphase gas, which may stimulate additional cooling and accretion as part of a self-regulating feedback loop. All velocities are below the escape speed from the galaxy, and so these clouds should rain back toward the galaxy center from which they came, keeping the fountain long lived. The data are consistent with major predictions of chaotic cold accretion, precipitation, and stimulated feedback models, and may trace processes fundamental to galaxy evolution at effectively all mass scales.
A number of relaxed, cool-core galaxy clusters exhibit diffuse, steep-spectrum radio sources in their central regions, known as radio mini-halos. It has been proposed that the relativistic electrons ...responsible for the emission have been reaccelerated by turbulence generated by the sloshing of the cool core gas. We present a high-resolution MHD simulation of gas sloshing in a galaxy cluster coupled with subgrid simulations of relativistic electron acceleration to test this hypothesis. Our simulation shows that the sloshing motions generate turbulence on the order of deltaupsilon ~ 50-200 km s super(-1) on spatial scales of ~50-100 kpc and below in the cool core region within the envelope of the sloshing cold fronts, whereas outside the cold fronts, there is negligible turbulence. This turbulence is potentially strong enough to reaccelerate relativistic electron seeds (with initial gamma ~ 100-500) to gamma ~ 10 super(4) via damping of magnetosonic waves and non-resonant compression. The seed electrons could remain in the cluster from, e.g., past active galactic nucleus activity. In combination with the magnetic field amplification in the core, these electrons then produce diffuse radio synchrotron emission that is coincident with the region bounded by the sloshing cold fronts, as indeed observed in X-rays and the radio. The result holds for different initial spatial distributions of pre-existing relativistic electrons. The power and the steep spectral index (alpha approximately 1-2) of the resulting radio emission are consistent with observations of mini-halos, though the theoretical uncertainties of the acceleration mechanisms are high. We also produce simulated maps of inverse-Compton hard X-ray emission from the same population of relativistic electrons.
X-ray observations of clusters of galaxies reveal the presence of edges in surface brightness and temperature, known as 'cold fronts'. In relaxed clusters with cool cores, these commonly observed ...edges have been interpreted as evidence for the 'sloshing' of the core gas in the cluster's gravitational potential. Such sloshing may provide a source of heat to the cluster core by mixing hot gas from the cluster outskirts with the cool-core gas. Using high-resolution N-body/Eulerian hydrodynamic simulations, we model gas sloshing in galaxy clusters initiated by mergers with subclusters. The simulations include merger scenarios with gas-filled and gasless subclusters. The effect of changing the viscosity of the intracluster medium is also explored, but heat conduction is assumed to be negligible. We find that sloshing can facilitate heat inflow to the cluster core, provided that there is a strong enough disturbance. Additionally, sloshing redistributes the gas in the cluster core, causing the gas to expand and decreasing the efficiency of radiative cooling. In adiabatic simulations, we find that sloshing can raise the entropy floor of the cluster core by nearly an order of magnitude in the strongest cases. If the ICM is viscous, the mixing of gases with different entropies is decreased and consequently the heat flux to the core is diminished. In simulations where radiative cooling is included, we find that although eventually a cooling flow develops, sloshing can prevent the significant buildup of cool gas in the core for times on the order of a Gyr for small disturbances and a few Gyr for large ones. If repeated encounters with merging subclusters sustain the sloshing of the central core gas, as is observed, this process can provide a relatively steady source of heat to the core, which can help prevent a significant cooling flow.
We test the predictions of emergent gravity (EG) using matter densities of relaxed, massive clusters of galaxies observed from optical and X-ray wavebands. We improve upon previous work in this area ...by including the baryon mass contribution of the brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) in each system, in addition to total mass profiles from gravitational lensing and mass profiles of the X-ray emitting gas from Chandra. We use this data in the context of EG to predict the "apparent" dark matter (DM) distribution from the observed baryon distribution, and vice versa. We find that although the inclusion of the BCG in the analysis improves the agreement with observations in the inner regions of the clusters ( kpc), at larger radii ( kpc) the EG predictions for mass profiles and baryon mass fractions are not in agreement with observations by a factor of up to ∼2−6, though the agreement improves at radii near r500. At least in its current form, EG does not appear to reproduce the observed characteristics of relaxed galaxy clusters as well as cold DM models.
Hitomi made the first direct measurements of galaxy cluster gas motions in the Perseus cluster, which implied that its core is fairly "quiescent," with velocities less than ∼200 km s−1, despite the ...presence of an active galactic nucleus and sloshing cold fronts. Building on previous work, we use synthetic Hitomi/X-ray Spectrometer (SXS) observations of the hot plasma of a simulated cluster with sloshing gas motions and varying viscosity to analyze its velocity structure in a similar fashion. We find that sloshing motions can produce line shifts and widths similar to those measured by Hitomi. We find these measurements are unaffected by the value of the gas viscosity, since its effects are only manifested clearly on angular scales smaller than the SXS ∼1′ PSF. The PSF biases the line shift of regions near the core as much as ∼40-50 km s−1, so it is crucial to model this effect carefully. We also infer that if sloshing motions dominate the observed velocity gradient, Perseus must be observed from a line of sight that is somewhat inclined from the plane of these motions, but one that still allows the spiral pattern to be visible. Finally, we find that assuming isotropy of motions can underestimate the total velocity and kinetic energy of the core in our simulation by as much as ∼60%. However, the total kinetic energy in our simulated cluster core is still less than 10% of the thermal energy in the core, in agreement with the Hitomi observations.
We demonstrate a novel technique for calibrating the energy scale of the EPIC-pn detector on
XMM-Newton
, which allows us to measure bulk flows in the intracluster medium (ICM) of the Perseus and ...Coma galaxy clusters. The procedure uses the fluorescent instrumental background lines present in all observations, in particular, Cu-K
α
. By studying their spatial and temporal variations, in addition to incorporating calibration observations, we refined the absolute energy scale of the detector to better than 150 km s
−1
at the Fe-K line, a large improvement over the nominal calibration accuracy of 550 km s
−1
. With our calibration, we mapped the bulk motions over much of the central 1200 and 800 kpc of Perseus and Coma, respectively, in spatial regions down to 65 and 140 kpc size. We cross-checked our procedure by comparing our measurements with those found in Perseus by
Hitomi
for an overlapping 65 kpc square region, finding consistent results. For Perseus, there is a relative line-of-sight velocity increase of 480 ± 210 km s
−1
(1
σ
) at a radius of 250 kpc east of the nucleus. This region is associated with a cold front, providing direct evidence of the ICM sloshing in the cluster potential well. Assuming the intrinsic distribution of bulk motions is Gaussian, its width is 214 ± 85 km s
−1
, excluding systematic uncertainties. Removing the sloshing region, this is reduced to 20–150 km s
−1
, which is similar in magnitude to the
Hitomi
line width measurements in undisturbed regions. In Coma, the line-of-sight velocity of the ICM varies between the velocities of the two central galaxies. Maps of the gas velocity and metallicity provide clues about the merger history of the Coma, with material to the north and east of the cluster core having a velocity similar to
NGC 4874
, while that to the south and west has velocities close to
NGC 4889
. Our results highlight the difference between a merging system, such as Coma, where we observe a ∼1000 km s
−1
range in velocity, and a relatively relaxed system, such as Perseus, with much weaker bulk motions.
Cold fronts-contact discontinuities in the intracluster medium (ICM) of galaxy clusters-should be disrupted by Kelvin-Helmholtz (K-H) instabilities due to the associated shear velocity. However, many ...observed cold fronts appear stable. This opens the possibility of placing constraints on microphysical mechanisms that stabilize them, such as the ICM viscosity and/or magnetic fields. We performed exploratory high-resolution simulations of cold fronts arising from subsonic gas sloshing in cluster cores using the grid-based Athena MHD code, comparing the effects of isotropic Spitzer and anisotropic Braginskii viscosity (expected in a magnetized plasma). Magnetized simulations with full Braginskii viscosity or isotropic Spitzer viscosity reduced by a factor functionof ~ 0.1 are both in qualitative agreement with observations in terms of suppressing K-H instabilities. The rms velocity of turbulence within the sloshing region is only modestly reduced by Braginskii viscosity. We also performed unmagnetized simulations with and without viscosity and find that magnetic fields have a substantial effect on the appearance of the cold fronts, even if the initial field is weak and the viscosity is the same. This suggests that determining the dominant suppression mechanism of a given cold front from X-ray observations (e.g., viscosity or magnetic fields) by comparison with simulations is not straightforward. Finally, we performed simulations including anisotropic thermal conduction, and find that including Braginskii viscosity in these simulations does not significantly affect the evolution of cold fronts; they are rapidly smeared out by thermal conduction, as in the inviscid case.
PDF
