Abstract
Young supernova remnant (SNR) shocks are believed to be the main sites of galactic cosmic-ray production, showing X-ray synchrotron-dominated spectra in the vicinity of their shock. While a ...faint thermal signature left by the shocked interstellar medium (ISM) should also be found in the spectra, proofs for such an emission in Tycho’s SNR have been lacking. We perform an extended statistical analysis of the X-ray spectra of five regions behind the blast wave of Tycho’s SNR using Chandra archival data. We use Bayesian inference to perform extended parameter space exploration and sample the posterior distributions of a variety of models of interest. According to Bayes factors, spectra of all five regions of analysis are best described by composite three-component models taking nonthermal emission, ejecta emission, and shocked ISM emission into account. The shocked ISM stands out the most in the northern limb of the SNR. We find for the shocked ISM a mean electron temperature
kT
e
=
0.96
−
0.51
+
1.33
keV for all regions and a mean ionization timescale
n
e
t
=
2.55
−
1.22
+
0.5
×
10
9
cm
−3
s resulting in a mean ambient density
n
e
=
0.32
−
0.15
+
0.23
cm
−3
around the remnant. We performed an extended analysis of the northern limb and show that the measured synchrotron cutoff energy is not well constrained in the presence of a shocked ISM component. Such results cannot currently be further investigated by analyzing emission lines in the 0.5–1 keV range, because of the low Chandra spectral resolution in this band. We show with simulated spectra that Athena X-ray Integral Field Unit future performances will be crucial to address this point.
ABSTRACT
Intracluster light (ICL) provides an important record of the interactions galaxy clusters have undergone. However, we are limited in our understanding by our measurement methods. To address ...this, we measure the fraction of cluster light that is held in the Brightest Cluster Galaxy and ICL (BCG+ICL fraction) and the ICL alone (ICL fraction) using observational methods (surface brightness threshold-SB, non-parametric measure-NP, composite models-CM, and multi-galaxy fitting-MGF) and new approaches under development (wavelet decomposition-WD) applied to mock images of 61 galaxy clusters (14 <log10M200c/M⊙ < 14.5) from four cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. We compare the BCG+ICL and ICL fractions from observational measures with those using simulated measures (aperture and kinematic separations). The ICL fractions measured by kinematic separation are significantly larger than observed fractions. We find the measurements are related and provide equations to estimate kinematic ICL fractions from observed fractions. The different observational techniques give consistent BCG+ICL and ICL fractions but are biased to underestimating the BCG+ICL and ICL fractions when compared with aperture simulation measures. Comparing the different methods and algorithms, we find that the MGF algorithm is most consistent with the simulations, and CM and SB methods show the smallest projection effects for the BCG+ICL and ICL fractions, respectively. The Ahad (CM), MGF, and WD algorithms are best set up to process larger samples; however, the WD algorithm in its current form is susceptible to projection effects. We recommend that new algorithms using these methods are explored to analyse the massive samples that Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time will provide.
Abstract
Synchrotron radiation from relativistic electrons is usually invoked as responsible for the nonthermal emission observed in supernova remnants. Diffusive shock acceleration is the most ...popular mechanism to explain the process of particles acceleration and within its framework a crucial role is played by the turbulent magnetic field. However, the standard models commonly used to fit X-ray synchrotron emission do not take into account the effects of turbulence in the shape of the resulting photon spectra. An alternative mechanism that properly includes such effects is the jitter radiation, which provides for an additional power law beyond the classical synchrotron cutoff. We fitted a jitter spectral model to Chandra, NuSTAR, SWIFT/BAT, and INTEGRAL/ISGRI spectra of Cassiopeia A (Cas A) and found that it describes the X-ray soft-to-hard range better than any of the standard cutoff models. The jitter radiation allows us to measure the index of the magnetic turbulence spectrum
ν
B
and the minimum scale of the turbulence
λ
min
across several regions of Cas A, with best-fit values
ν
B
∼ 2 − 2.4 and
λ
min
≲
100
km.
ABSTRACT
We present X-ray and optical properties of the optically confirmed galaxy cluster sample from the 3XMM/SDSS Stripe 82 cluster survey. The sample includes 54 galaxy clusters in the redshift ...range of 0.05–1.2, with a median redshift of 0.36. We first present the X-ray temperature and luminosity measurements that are used to investigate the X-ray luminosity–temperature relation. The slope and intercept of the relation are consistent with those published in the literature. Then, we investigate the optical properties of the cluster galaxies including their morphological analysis and the galaxy luminosity functions (GLFs). The morphological content of cluster galaxies is investigated as a function of cluster mass and distance from the cluster centre. No strong variation of the fraction of early- and late-type galaxies with cluster mass is observed. The fraction of early-type galaxies as a function of cluster radius varies as expected. The individual GLFs of red sequence galaxies were studied in the five ugriz bands for 48 clusters. The GLFs were then stacked in three mass bins and two redshift bins. Twenty clusters of the present sample are studied for the first time in X-rays, and all are studied for the first time in the optical range. Altogether, our sample appears to have X-ray and optical properties typical of ‘average’ cluster properties.
Intracluster Light (ICL) provides an important record of the interactions galaxy clusters have undergone. However, we are limited in our understanding by our measurement methods. To address this we ...measure the fraction of cluster light that is held in the Brightest Cluster Galaxy and ICL (BCG+ICL fraction) and the ICL alone (ICL fraction) using observational methods (Surface Brightness Threshold-SB, Non-Parametric Measure-NP, Composite Models-CM, Multi-Galaxy Fitting-MGF) and new approaches under development (Wavelet Decomposition-WD) applied to mock images of 61 galaxy clusters (14<log10 M_200c/M_solar <14.5) from four cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. We compare the BCG+ICL and ICL fractions from observational measures with those using simulated measures (aperture and kinematic separations). The ICL fractions measured by kinematic separation are significantly larger than observed fractions. We find the measurements are related and provide equations to estimate kinematic ICL fractions from observed fractions. The different observational techniques give consistent BCG+ICL and ICL fractions but are biased to underestimating the BCG+ICL and ICL fractions when compared with aperture simulation measures. Comparing the different methods and algorithms we find that the MGF algorithm is most consistent with the simulations, and CM and SB methods show the smallest projection effects for the BCG+ICL and ICL fractions respectively. The Ahad (CM), MGF and WD algorithms are best set up to process larger samples, however, the WD algorithm in its current form is susceptible to projection effects. We recommend that new algorithms using these methods are explored to analyse the massive samples that Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time will provide.
Synchrotron radiation from relativistic electrons is usually invoked as the responsible for the nonthermal emission observed in Supernova Remnants (SNRs). Diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) is the ...most popular mechanism to explain the process of particles acceleration and within its framework a crucial role is played by the turbulent magnetic-field. However, the standard models commonly used to fit X-ray synchrotron emission do not take into account the effects of turbulence in the shape of the resulting photon spectra. An alternative mechanism that properly includes such effects is the jitter radiation, that provides for an additional power-law beyond the classical synchrotron cutoff. We fitted a jitter spectral model to Chandra, NuSTAR, SWIFT/BAT and INTEGRAL/ISGRI spectra of Cassiopeia A and found that it describes the X-ray soft-to-hard range better than any of the standard cutoff models. The jitter radiation allows us to measure the index of the magnetic turbulence spectrum \(\nu_B\) and the minimum scale of the turbulence \(\lambda_{\rm{min}}\) across several regions of Cas A, with best-fit values \(\nu_B \sim 2-2.4\) and \(\lambda_{\rm{min}} \lesssim 100\) km.
We present X-ray and optical properties of the optically confirmed galaxy cluster sample from the 3XMM/SDSS Stripe 82 cluster survey. The sample includes 54 galaxy clusters in the redshift range of ...0.05-1.2, with a median redshift of 0.36. We first present the X-ray temperature and luminosity measurements that are used to investigate the X-ray luminosity-temperature relation. The slope and intercept of the relation are consistent with those published in the literature. Then, we investigate the optical properties of the cluster galaxies including their morphological analysis and the galaxy luminosity functions. The morphological content of cluster galaxies is investigated as a function of cluster mass and distance from the cluster center. No strong variation of the fraction of early and late type galaxies with cluster mass is observed. The fraction of early type galaxies as a function of cluster radius varies as expected. The individual galaxy luminosity functions (GLFs) of red sequence galaxies were studied in the five ugriz bands for 48 clusters. The GLFs were then stacked in three mass bins and two redshift bins. Twenty clusters of the present sample are studied for the first time in X-rays, and all are studied for the first time in the optical range. Altogether, our sample appears to have X-ray and optical properties typical of average cluster properties.
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