No Arabic abstract
Several galaxy clusters are known to present multiple and misaligned pairs of cavities seen in X-rays, as well as twisted kiloparsec-scale jets at radio wavelengths. It suggests that the AGN precessing jets play a role in the formation of the misaligned bubbles. Also, X-ray spectra reveal that typically these systems are also able to supress cooling flows, predicted theoretically. The absence of cooling flows in galaxy clusters has been a mistery for many years since numerical simulations and analytical studies suggest that AGN jets are highly energetic, but are unable to redistribute it at all directions. We performed 3D hydrodynamical simulations of the interaction between a precessing AGN jet and the warm intracluster medium plasma, which dynamics is coupled to a NFW dark matter gravitational potential. Radiative cooling has been taken into account and the cooling flow problem was studied. We found that precession is responsible for multiple pairs of bubbles, as observed. The misaligned bubbles rise up to scales of tens of kiloparsecs, where the thermal energy released by the jets are redistributed. After $sim 150$ Myrs, the temperature of the gas within the cavities is kept of order of $sim 10^7$ K, while the denser plasma of the intracluster medium at the central regions reaches $T sim 10^5$ K. The existence of multiple bubbles, at diferent directions, result in an integrated temperature along the line of sight much larger than the simulations of non-precessing jets. This result is in agreement with the observations. The simulations reveal that the cooling flows cessed $sim 50 - 70$ Myr after the AGN jets are started.
A common feature of the X-ray bubbles observed in Chandra images of some cooling flow clusters is that they appear to be surrounded by bright, cool shells. Temperature maps of a few nearby luminous clusters reveal that the shells consist of the coolest gas in the clusters -- much cooler than the surrounding medium. Using simple models, we study the effects of this cool emission on the inferred cooling flow properties of clusters. We find that the introduction of bubbles into model clusters that do NOT have cooling flows results in temperature and surface brightness profiles that resemble those seen in nearby cooling flow clusters. They also approximately reproduce the recent XMM-Newton and Chandra observations of a high minimum temperature of 1-3 keV. Hence, bubbles, if present, must be taken into account when inferring the physical properties of the ICM. In the case of some clusters, bubbles may account entirely for these observed features, calling into question their designation as clusters with cooling flows. However, since not all nearby cooling flow clusters show bubble-like features, we suggest that there may be a diverse range of physical phenomena that give rise to the same observed features.
We present new Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA, 1.5 GHz) radio data for the giant elliptical galaxy IC 4296, supported by archival radio, X-ray (Chandra, XMM-Newton) and optical (SOAR, HST) observations. The galaxy hosts powerful radio jets piercing through the inner hot X-ray emitting atmosphere, depositing most of the energy into the ambient intra-cluster medium (ICM). Whereas the radio surface brightness of the A configuration image is consistent with a Fanaroff-Riley Class I (FR I) system, the D configuration image shows two bright, relative to the central region, large (~160 kpc diameter), well-defined lobes, previously reported by Killeen et al., at a projected distance r~>230 kpc. The XMM-Newton image reveals an X-ray cavity associated with one of the radio lobes. The total enthalpy of the radio lobes is ~7x10^59 erg and the mechanical power output of the jets is ~10^44 erg/s. The jets are mildly curved and possibly re-brightened by the relative motion of the galaxy and the ICM. The lobes display sharp edges, suggesting the presence of bow shocks, which would indicate that they are expanding supersonically. The central entropy and cooling time of the X-ray gas are unusually low and the nucleus hosts a warm Halpha+[NII] nebula and a cold molecular CO disk. Because most of the energy of the jets is deposited far from the nucleus, the atmosphere of the galaxy continues to cool, apparently feeding the central supermassive black hole and powering the jet activity.
Feedback from AGN jets has been proposed to counteract the catastrophic cooling in many galaxy clusters. However, it is still unclear which physical processes are acting to couple the energy from the bi-directional jets to the ICM. We study the long-term evolution of rising bubbles that were inflated by AGN jets using MHD simulations. In the wake of the rising bubbles, a significant amount of low-entropy gas is brought into contact with the hot cluster gas. We assess the energy budget of the uplifted gas and find it comparable to the total energy injected by the jets. Although our simulation does not include explicit thermal conduction, we find that, for reasonable assumptions about the conduction coefficient, the rate is fast enough that much of the uplifted gas may be thermalized before it sinks back to the core. Thus, we propose that the AGN can act like a heat pump to move low-entropy gas from the cluster core to the heat reservoir and will be able to heat the inner cluster more efficiently than would be possible by direct energy transfer from jets alone. We show that the maximum efficiency of this mechanism, i.e. the ratio between the conductive thermal energy and the work needed to lift the gas, $xi_{mathrm{max}}$ can exceed 100 per cent. While $xi$ < $xi_{mathrm{max}}$ in realistic scenarios, AGN-induced thermal conduction has the potential to significantly increase the efficiency with which AGN can heat cool-core clusters and transform the bursty AGN activities into a smoother and enduring heating process.
The observed cooling rate of hot gas in clusters is much lower than that inferred from the gas density profiles. This suggests that the gas is being heated by some source. We use an adaptive-mesh refinement code (FLASH) to simulate the effect of multiple, randomly positioned, injections of thermal energy within 50 kpc of the centre of an initially isothermal cluster with mass M_200=3x10^(14) Msol and kT=3.1 keV. We have performed eight simulations with spherical bubbles of energy generated every 10^8 years, over a total of 1.5 Gyr. Each bubble is created by injecting thermal energy steadily for 10^7 years; the total energy of each bubble ranges from 0.1--3x10^(60) erg, depending on the simulation. We find that 2x10^(60) erg per bubble (corresponding to a average power of 6.3x10^(44) erg/s) effectively balances energy loss in the cluster and prevents the accumulation of gas below kT=1 keV from exceeding the observational limits of 30 Msol/yr. This injection rate is comparable to the radiated luminosity of the cluster, and the required energy and periodic timescale of events are consistent with observations of bubbles produced by central AGN in clusters. The effectiveness of this process depends primarily on the total amount of injected energy and the initial location of the bubbles, but is relatively insensitive to the exact duty cycle of events.
The Fermi bubbles are two giant bubbles in gamma rays lying above and below the Galactic center (GC). Despite numerous studies on the bubbles, their origin and emission mechanism remain elusive. Here we use a suite of hydrodynamic simulations to study the scenario where the cosmic rays (CRs) in the bubbles are mainly accelerated at the forward shocks driven by a pair of opposing jets from Sgr A*. We find that an active galactic nucleus (AGN) jet event happened $5-6$ Myr ago can naturally reproduce the bilobular morphology of the bubbles, and the postshock gas temperature in the bubbles is heated to $sim0.4$ keV, consistent with recent X-ray observations. The forward shocks compress the hot halo gas, and at low latitudes, the compressed gas shows an X-shaped structure, naturally explaining the biconical X-ray structure in the ROSAT 1.5 keV map in both morphology and X-ray surface brightness. CR acceleration is most efficient in the head regions of the bubbles during the first 2 Myrs. The opposing jets release a total energy of $sim 10^{55}$ erg with an Eddington ratio of $sim 10^{-3}$, which falls well in the range of the hot accretion flow mode for black holes. Our simulations further show that the forward shocks driven by spherical winds at the GC typically produce bubbles with much wider bases than observed, and could not reproduce the biconical X-ray structure at low latitudes. This suggests that starburst or AGN winds are unlikely the origin of the bubbles in the shock scenario.