No Arabic abstract
In order to investigate the spatial distribution of the ICM temperature in galaxy clusters in a quantitative way and probe the physics behind, we analyze the X-ray spectra of a sample of 50 galaxy clusters, which were observed with the Chandra ACIS instrument in the past 15 years, and measure the radial temperature profiles out to $0.45r_{500}$. We construct a physical model that takes into account the effects of gravitational heating, thermal history (such as radiative cooling, AGN feedback, and thermal conduction) and work done via gas compression, and use it to fit the observed temperature profiles by running Bayesian regressions. The results show that in all cases our model provides an acceptable fit at the 68% confidence level. To further validate this model we select nine clusters that have been observed with both Chandra (out to $gtrsim 0.3r_{500}$) and Suzaku (out to $gtrsim 1.5r_{500}$), fit their Chandra spectra with our model, and compare the extrapolation of the best-fits with the Suzaku measurements. We find that the model profiles agree with the Suzaku results very well in seven clusters. In the rest two clusters the difference between the model and observation is possibly caused by local thermal substructures. Our study also implies that for most of the clusters the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium is safe out to at least $0.5r_{500}$, and the non-gravitational interactions between dark matter and its luminous counterpart is consistent with zero.
We present radial entropy profiles of the intracluster medium (ICM) for a collection of 239 clusters taken from the Chandra X-ray Observatorys Data Archive. Entropy is of great interest because it controls ICM global properties and records the thermal history of a cluster. Entropy is therefore a useful quantity for studying the effects of feedback on the cluster environment and investigating any breakdown of cluster self-similarity. We find that most ICM entropy profiles are well-fit by a model which is a power-law at large radii and approaches a constant value at small radii: K(r) = K0 + K100(r/100 kpc), where K0 quantifies the typical excess of core entropy above the best fitting power-law found at larger radii. We also show that the K0 distributions of both the full archival sample and the primary HIFLUGCS sample of Reiprich (2001) are bimodal with a distinct gap between K0 ~ 30 - 50 keV cm^2 and population peaks at K0 ~ 15 keV cm^2 and K0 ~ 150 keV cm^2. The effects of PSF smearing and angular resolution on best-fit K0 values are investigated using mock Chandra observations and degraded entropy profiles, respectively. We find that neither of these effects is sufficient to explain the entropy-profile flattening we measure at small radii. The influence of profile curvature and number of radial bins on best-fit K0 is also considered, and we find no indication K0 is significantly impacted by either. For completeness, we include previously unpublished optical spectroscopy of Halpha and [N II] emission lines discussed in Cavagnolo et al. (2008a). All data and results associated with this work are publicly available via the project web site.
We present Chandra gas temperature profiles at large radii for a sample of 13 nearby, relaxed galaxy clusters and groups, which includes A133, A262, A383, A478, A907, A1413, A1795, A1991, A2029, A2390, MKW4, RXJ1159+5531, and USGC S152. The sample covers a range of average temperatures from 1 to 10 keV. The clusters are selected from the archive or observed by us to have sufficient exposures and off-center area coverage to enable accurate background subtraction and reach the temperature accuracy of better than 20-30% at least to r=0.4-0.5 r_180, and for the three best clusters, to 0.6-0.7 r_180. For all clusters, we find cool gas in the cores, outside of which the temperature reaches a peak at r =~ 0.15 r_180 and then declines to ~0.5 of its peak value at r =~ 0.5 r_180. When the profiles are scaled by the cluster average temperature (excluding cool cores) and the estimated virial radius, they show large scatter at small radii, but remarkable similarity at r>0.1-0.2 r_180 for all but one cluster (A2390). Our results are in good agreement with previous measurements from ASCA by Markevitch et al. and from Beppo-SAX by DeGrandi & Molendi. Four clusters have recent XMM-Newton temperature profiles, two of which agree with our results, and we discuss reasons for disagreement for the other two. The overall shape of temperature profiles at large radii is reproduced in recent cosmological simulations.
Stars in globular clusters (GCs) lose a non negligible amount of mass during their post-main sequence evolution. This material is then expected to build up a substantial intra-cluster medium (ICM) within the GC. However, the observed gas content in GCs is a couple of orders of magnitude below these expectations. Here we follow the evolution of this stellar wind material through hydrodynamical simulations to attempt to reconcile theoretical predictions with observations. We test different mechanisms proposed in the literature to clear out the gas such as ram-pressure stripping by the motion of the GC in the Galactic halo medium and ionisation by UV sources. We use the code ramses to run 3D hydrodynamical simulations to study for the first time the ICM evolution within discretised multi-mass GC models including stellar winds and full radiative transfer. We find that the inclusion of both ram-pressure and ionisation is mandatory to explain why only a very low amount of ionised gas is observed in the core of GCs. The same mechanisms operating in ancient GCs that clear the gas could also be efficient at younger ages, meaning that young GCs would not be able to retain gas and form multiple generations of stars as assumed in many models to explain multiple populations. However, this rapid clearing of gas is consistent with observations of young massive clusters.
Using a cosmological dark matter simulation of a galaxy-cluster halo, we follow the temporal evolution of its globular cluster population. To mimic the red and blue globular cluster populations, we select at high redshift $(zsim 1)$ two sets of particles from individual galactic halos constrained by the fact that, at redshift $z=0$, they have density profiles similar to observed ones. At redshift $z=0$, approximately 60% of our selected globular clusters were removed from their original halos building up the intra-cluster globular cluster population, while the remaining 40% are still gravitationally bound to their original galactic halos. Since the blue population is more extended than the red one, the intra-cluster globular cluster population is dominated by blue globular clusters, with a relative fraction that grows from 60% at redshift $z=0$ up to 83% for redshift $zsim 2$. In agreement with observational results for the Virgo galaxy cluster, the blue intra-cluster globular cluster population is more spatially extended than the red one, pointing to a tidally disrupted origin.
We present the analysis of the temperature and metallicity profiles of 12 galaxy clusters in the redshift range 0.1--0.3 selected from the Chandra archive with at least ~20,000 net ACIS counts and kT>6 keV. We divide the sample between 7 Cooling-Core (CC) and 5 Non-Cooling-Core (NCC) clusters according to their central cooling time. We find that single power-laws can describe properly both the temperature and metallicity profiles at radii larger than 0.1 r_180 in both CC and NCC systems, showing the NCC objects steeper profiles outwards. A significant deviation is only present in the inner 0.1 r_180. We perform a comparison of our sample with the De Grandi & Molendi BeppoSAX sample of local CC and NCC clusters, finding a complete agreement in the CC cluster profile and a marginally higher value (at ~1sigma) in the inner regions of the NCC clusters. The slope of the power-law describing kT(r) within 0.1 r_180 correlates strongly with the ratio between the cooling time and the age of the Universe at the cluster redshift, being the slope >0 and tau_c/tau_age<=0.6 in CC systems.