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 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.
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.
Turbulent dynamo field amplification has often been invoked to explain the strong field strengths in thin rims in supernova shocks (approx.100 micrograms) and in radio relics in galaxy clusters ...(approx. micrograms). We present high-resolution magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the interaction between pre-shock turbulence, clumping and shocks, to quantify the conditions under which turbulent dynamo amplification can be significant. We demonstrate numerically converged field amplification which scales with Alfven Mach number, B/B0 varies as MA, up to MA approx.150.This implies that the post-shock field strength is relatively independent of the seed field. Amplification is dominated by compression at low MA, and stretching (turbulent amplification) at high MA. For high MA, the B-field grows exponentially and saturates at equipartition with turbulence, while the vorticity jumps sharply at the shock and subsequently decays; the resulting field is orientated predominately along the shock normal (an effect only apparent in 3D and not 2D). This agrees with the radial field bias seen in supernova remnants. By contrast, for low MA, field amplification is mostly compressional, relatively modest, and results in a predominantly perpendicular field. The latter is consistent with the polarization seen in radio relics. Our results are relatively robust to the assumed level of gas clumping. Our results imply that the turbulent dynamo may be important for supernovae, but is only consistent with the field strength, and not geometry, for cluster radio relics. For the latter, this implies strong pre-existing B-fields in the ambient cluster outskirts.
Abstract
We present radio and X-ray studies of A3444 and MS1455.0+2232, two galaxy clusters with radio minihalos in their cool cores. A3444 is imaged using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) ...at 333, 607, and 1300 MHz and the Very Large Array at 1435 MHz. Most of the minihalo is contained within
r
< 120 kpc, but a fainter extension, stretching out to 380 kpc southwest of the center, is detected at 607 MHz. Using Chandra, we detect four X-ray sloshing cold fronts: three in the cool core at
r
= 60, 120, and 230 kpc, and a fourth one at
r
= 400 kpc—in the region of the southwestern radio extension—suggesting that the intracluster medium (ICM) is sloshing on a cluster-wide scale. The radio emission is contained within the envelope defined by these fronts. We also analyzed archival 383 MHz GMRT and Chandra observations of MS 1455.0+2232, which exhibits a known minihalo with its bright part delineated by cold fronts inside the cool core, but with a faint extension beyond the core. Similarly to A3444, we find a cold front at
r
∼ 425 kpc, containing the radio emission. Thus the entire diffuse radio emission seen in these clusters appears to be related to large-scale sloshing of the ICM. The radio spectrum of the A3444 minihalo is a power law with a steep index
α
= 1.0 ± 0.1. The spectrum steepens with increasing distance from the center, as expected if the minihalo originates from reacceleration of relativistic particles by the sloshing-induced turbulence in the ICM.
ABSTRACT Astro-H will be able for the first time to map gas velocities and detect turbulence in galaxy clusters. One of the best targets for turbulence studies is the Coma cluster, due to its ...proximity, absence of a cool core, and lack of a central active galactic nucleus. To determine what constraints Astro-H will be able to place on the Coma velocity field, we construct simulated maps of the projected gas velocity and compute the second-order structure function, an analog of the velocity power spectrum. We vary the injection scale, dissipation scale, slope, and normalization of the turbulent power spectrum, and apply measurement errors and finite sampling to the velocity field. We find that even with sparse coverage of the cluster, Astro-H will be able to measure the Mach number and the injection scale of the turbulent power spectrum-the quantities determining the energy flux down the turbulent cascade and the diffusion rate for everything that is advected by the gas (metals, cosmic rays, etc.). Astro-H will not be sensitive to the dissipation scale or the slope of the power spectrum in its inertial range, unless they are outside physically motivated intervals. We give the expected confidence intervals for the injection scale and the normalization of the power spectrum for a number of possible pointing configurations, combining the structure function and velocity dispersion data. Importantly, we also determine that measurement errors on the line shift will bias the velocity structure function upward, and show how to correct this bias.
Many galaxy clusters host megaparsec-scale radio halos, generated by ultrarelativistic electrons in the magnetized intracluster medium. The X-ray luminosity and redshift-limited Extended GMRT Radio ...Halo Survey provides a rich and unique dataset for statistical studies of the halos. We uniformly analyze the radio and X-ray data for the GMRT cluster sample, and use the new Planck Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) catalog to revisit the correlations between the power of radio halos and the thermal properties of galaxy clusters. Our bigger and more homogenous sample confirms that the X-ray luminous (L sub(500) > 5 x 10 super(44) erg s super(-1)) clusters branch into two populations-radio halos lie on the correlation, while clusters without radio halos have their radio upper limits well below that correlation. Bimodality of both correlations can be traced to clusters dynamics, with radio halos found exclusively in merging clusters. These results confirm the key role of mergers for the origin of giant radio halos, suggesting that they trigger the relativistic particle acceleration.
Substructures in the core of Abell 2319 Ichinohe, Y; Simionescu, A; Werner, N ...
Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
06/2021, Volume:
504, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
ABSTRACT
We analysed the deep archival Chandra observations of the high-temperature galaxy cluster Abell 2319 to investigate the prominent cold front in its core. The main sharp arc of the front ...shows wiggles, or variations of the radius of the density jump along the arc. At the southern end of the arc is a feature that resembles a Kelvin–Helmholtz (KH) eddy, beyond which the sharp front dissolves. These features suggest that KH instabilities develop at the front. Under this assumption, we can place an upper limit on the ICM viscosity that is several times below the isotropic Spitzer value. Other features include a split of the cold front at its northern edge, which may be another KH eddy. There is a small pocket of hot, less-dense gas inside the cold front, which may indicate a ‘hole’ in the front’s magnetic insulation layer that lets the heat from the outer gas to penetrate inside the front. Finally, a large concave brightness feature south-west of the cluster core can be caused by the gas-dynamic instabilities. We speculate that it can also be an inner boundary of a giant AGN bubble, similar to that in Ophiuchus. If the latter interpretation is supported by better radio data, this could be a remnant of another extremely powerful AGN outburst.
The frequently observed association between giant radio halos (RHs) and merging galaxy clusters has driven present theoretical models of non-thermal emission from galaxy clusters, which are based on ...the idea that the energy dissipated during cluster-cluster mergers could power the formation of RHs. To quantitatively test the merger-halo connection, we present the first statistical study based on deep radio data and X-ray observations of a complete X-ray-selected sample of galaxy clusters with X-ray luminosity {>=}5 x 10{sup 44} erg s{sup -1} and redshift 0.2 {<=} z {<=} 0.32. Using several methods to characterize cluster substructures, namely, the power ratios, centroid shift, and X-ray brightness concentration parameter, we show that clusters with and without RH can be quantitatively differentiated in terms of their dynamical properties. In particular, we confirm that RHs are associated with dynamically disturbed clusters and clusters without RH are more 'relaxed', with only a couple of exceptions where a disturbed cluster does not exhibit a halo.
Cold fronts in cluster cool cores should be erased on short timescales by thermal conduction, unless protected by magnetic fields that are "draped" parallel to the front surfaces, suppressing ...conduction perpendicular to the sloshing fronts. We present a series of MHD simulations of cold front formation in the core of a galaxy cluster with anisotropic thermal conduction, exploring a parameter space of conduction strengths parallel and perpendicular to the field lines. Including conduction has a strong effect on the temperature distribution of the core and the appearance of the cold fronts. This results in the heating of this gas below the front on a timescale of a Gyr, but the sharpness of the density and temperature jumps may nevertheless be preserved. Finally, the combination of sloshing and anisotropic thermal conduction can result in a larger flux of heat to the core than either process in isolation.
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