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Register a new userThe Extended GMRT Radio Halo Survey I: New upper limits on radio halos and mini-halos
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A fraction of galaxy clusters host diffuse radio sources called radio halos, radio relics and mini-halos. We present the sample and first results from the Extended GMRT Radio Halo Survey (EGRHS)- an extension of the GMRT Radio Halo Survey (GRHS, Venturi et al. 2007, 2008). It is a systematic radio survey of galaxy clusters selected from the REFLEX and eBCS X-ray catalogs . Analysis of GMRT data at 610/ 235/ 325 MHz on 12 galaxy clusters are presented. We report the detection of a newly discovered mini-halo in the cluster RXJ1532.9+3021 at 610 MHz. A small scale relic (~200 kpc) is suspected in the cluster Z348. We do not detect cluster-scale diffuse emission in 11 clusters. Robust upper limits on the detection of radio halo of size of 1 Mpc are determined. We also present upper limits on the detections of mini-halos in a sub-sample of cool-core clusters. The upper limits for radio halos and mini-halos are plotted in the radio power- X-ray luminosity plane and the correlations are discussed. Diffuse extended emission, not related to the target clusters, but detected as by-products in the sensitive images of two of the cluster fields (A689 and RXJ0439.0+0715) are reported. Based on the information about the presence of radio halos (or upper limits), available on 48 clusters out of the total sample of 67 clusters (EGRHS+GRHS), we find that ~23% of the clusters host radio halos. The radio halo fraction rises to ~31%, when only the clusters with X-ray luminosities >8x10^44 erg/s are considered. Mini-halos are found in ~50 % of cool-core clusters. A qualitative examination of the X-ray images of the clusters with no diffuse radio emission indicates that a majority of these clusters do not show extreme dynamical disturbances and supports the idea that mergers play an important role in the generation of radio halos/relics.
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The intra-cluster medium contains cosmic rays and magnetic fields that are manifested through the large scale synchrotron sources, termed as radio halos, relics and mini-halos. The Extended Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) Radio Halo Survey (EGRHS) is an extension of the GMRT Radio Halo Survey (GRHS) designed to search for radio halos using GMRT 610/235 MHz observations. The GRHS+EGRHS consists of 64 clusters in the redshift range 0.2 -- 0.4 that have an X-ray luminosity larger than 5x10^44 erg/s in the 0.1 -- 2.4 keV band and with declinations > -31 deg in the REFLEX and eBCS X-ray cluster catalogues. In this second paper in the series, GMRT 610/235 MHz data on the last batch of 11 galaxy clusters and the statistical analysis of the full sample are presented. A new mini-halo in RXJ2129.6+0005 and candidate diffuse sources in Z5247, A2552 and Z1953 are discovered. A unique feature of this survey are the upper limits on the detections of 1 Mpc sized radio halos; 4 new are presented here making a total of 31 in the survey. Of the sample, 58 clusters that have adequately sensitive radio information were used to obtain the most accurate occurrence fractions so far. The occurrence of radio halos in our X-ray selected sample is ~22%, that of mini-halos is 13% and that of relics is ~5%. The radio power - X-ray luminosity diagrams for the radio halos and mini-halos with the detections and upper limits are presented. The morphological estimators namely, centroid shift (w), concentration parameter (c) and power ratios (P_3/P_0) derived from the Chandra X-ray images are used as proxies for the dynamical states of the GRHS+EGRHS clusters. The clusters with radio halos and mini-halos occupy distinct quadrants in the c-w, c-P_3/P_0 and w - P_3/P_0 planes, corresponding to the more and less morphological disturbance, respectively. The non-detections span both the quadrants.
A possibility of generating a population of cosmic-ray particles accelerated in supernovae typeIa (SNIa) remnants in the intracluster medium (ICM) is discussed. The presently constrained host-less SNIa rates in the clusters are found to be sufficient to fill a few hundred kpc region with cosmic-ray electrons within their typical synchrotron life-time of 100 Myr. The SNIa have already been considered potential sources of excess Fe abundance in cool-core clusters, distributed heating and turbulence in ICM. A good fraction of total radio power from mini-halos can be sourced from the SNIa energy deposited in the ICM with required energy conversion efficiency <1 per cent. The radio power estimated from low Mach number shock acceleration in SNIa remnants is consistent with the observations within the uncertainties in the estimates. Some observational properties of the radio mini-halos are broadly consistent with the SNIa scenario. It is also speculated that radio powers and possibly detections of mini-halos are linked to star formation and merger histories of the clusters.
We use results from a constrained, cosmological MHD simulation of the Local Universe to predict radio halos and their evolution for a volume limited set of galaxy clusters and compare to current observations. The simulated magnetic field inside the clusters is a result of turbulent amplification within them, with the magnetic seed originating from star-burst driven, galactic outflows. We evaluate three models, where we choose different normalizations for the Cosmic Ray proton population within clusters. Similar to our previous analysis of the Coma cluster (Donnert et al. 2010), the radial profile and the morphological properties of observed radio halos can not be reproduced, even with a radially increasing energy fraction within the cosmic ray proton population. Scaling relations between X-ray luminosity and radio power can be reproduced by all models, however all models fail in the prediction of clusters with no radio emission. Also the evolutionary tracks of our largest clusters in all models fail to reproduce the observed bi-modality in radio luminosity. This provides additional evidence that the framework of hadronic, secondary models is disfavored to reproduce the large scale diffuse radio emission of galaxy clusters. We also provide predictions for the unavoidable emission of $gamma$-rays from the hadronic models for the full cluster set. None of such secondary models is yet excluded by the observed limits in $gamma$-ray emission, emphasizing that large scale diffuse radio emission is a powerful tool to constrain the amount of cosmic ray protons in galaxy clusters.
We review models for giant radio halos in clusters of galaxies, with a focus on numerical and theoretical work. After summarising the most important observations of these objects, we present an introduction to the theoretical aspects of hadronic models. We compare these models with observations using simulations and find severe problems for hadronic models. We give a short introduction to reacceleration models and show results from the first simulation of CRe reaccel- eration in cluster mergers. We find that in-line with previous theoretical work, reacceleration models are able to elegantly explain main observables of giant radio halos.
The underlying physics of giant and mini radio halos in galaxy clusters is still an open question. We find that mini halos (such as in Perseus and Ophiuchus) can be explained by radio-emitting electrons that are generated in hadronic cosmic ray (CR) interactions with protons of the intracluster medium. By contrast, the hadronic model either fails to explain the extended emission of giant radio halos (as in Coma at low frequencies) or would require a flat CR profile, which can be realized through outward streaming and diffusion of CRs (in Coma and A2163 at 1.4 GHz). We suggest that a second, leptonic component could be responsible for the missing flux in the outer parts of giant halos within a new hybrid scenario and we describe its possible observational consequences. To study the hadronic emission component of the radio halo population statistically, we use a cosmological mock galaxy cluster catalog built from the MultiDark simulation. Because of the properties of CR streaming and the different scalings of the X-ray luminosity (L_X) and the Sunyaev-Zeldovich flux (Y) with gas density, our model can simultaneously reproduce the observed bimodality of radio-loud and radio-quiet clusters at the same L_X as well as the unimodal distribution of radio-halo luminosity versus Y; thereby suggesting a physical solution to this apparent contradiction. We predict radio halo emission down to the mass scale of galaxy groups, which highlights the unique prospects for low-frequency radio surveys (such as the LOFAR Tier 1 survey) to increase the number of detected radio halos by at least an order of magnitude.
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