No Arabic abstract
In this work, we investigate the relation between the radially-resolved thermodynamic quantities of the intracluster medium in the X-COP cluster sample, aiming to assess the stratification properties of the ICM. We model the relations between radius, gas temperature, density and pressure using a combination of power-laws, also evaluating the intrinsic scatter in these relations. We show that the gas pressure is remarkably well correlated to the density, with very small scatter. Also, the temperature correlates with gas density with similar scatter. The slopes of these relations have values that show a clear transition from the inner cluster regions to the outskirts. This transition occurs at the radius $r_t = 0.19(pm0.04)R_{500}$ and electron density $n_t = (1.91pm0.21)cdot10^{-3} cm^{-3} E^2 (z)$. We find that above 0.2 $R_{500}$ the radial thermodynamic profiles are accurately reproduced by a well defined and physically motivated framework, where the dark matter follows the NFW potential and the gas is represented by a polytropic equation of state. By modeling the gas temperature dependence upon both the gas density and radius, we propose a new method to reconstruct the hydrostatic mass profile based only on the quite inexpensive measurement of the gas density profile.
The hot plasma in galaxy clusters is expected to be heated to high temperatures through shocks and adiabatic compression. The thermodynamical properties of the gas encode information on the processes leading to the thermalization of the gas in the clusters potential well as well as non-gravitational processes such as gas cooling, AGN feedback and kinetic energy. In this work we present the radial profiles of the thermodynamic properties of the intracluster medium (ICM) out to the virial radius for a sample of 12 galaxy clusters selected from the Planck all-sky survey. We determine the universal profiles of gas density, temperature, pressure, and entropy over more than two decades in radius. We exploit jointly X-ray information from XMM and Sunyaev-Zeldovich constraints from Planck to recover thermodynamic properties out to 2 R500. We provide average functional forms for the radial dependence of the main quantities and quantify the slope and intrinsic scatter of the population as a function of radius. We find that gas density and pressure profiles steepen steadily with radius, in excellent agreement with previous observational results. Entropy profiles beyond R500 closely follow the predictions for the gravitational collapse of structures. The scatter in all thermodynamical quantities reaches a minimum in the range [0.2-0.8] R500 and increases outwards. Somewhat surprisingly, we find that pressure is substantially more scattered than temperature and density. Our results indicate that once accreting substructures are properly excised, the properties of the ICM beyond the cooling region R > 0.3 R500) follow remarkably well the predictions of simple gravitational collapse and require little non-gravitational corrections.
We present the joint analysis of the X-ray and SZ signals in A2319, the galaxy cluster with the highest signal-to-noise ratio in Planck maps and that has been surveyed within our XMM Cluster Outskirts Project (X-COP). We recover the thermodynamical profiles by the geometrical deprojection of the X-ray surface brightness, of the SZ comptonization parameter, and an accurate and robust spectroscopic measurements of the temperature. We resolve the clumpiness of the density to be below 20 per cent demonstrating that most of this clumpiness originates from the ongoing merger and can be associated to large-scale inhomogeneities. This analysis is done in azimuthally averaged radial bins and in eight independent angular sectors, enabling us to study in details the azimuthal variance of the recovered properties. Given the exquisite quality of the X-ray and SZ datasets, we constrain at $R_{200}$ the total hydrostatic mass, modelled with a NFW profile, with very high precision ($M_{200} = 9.76 pm 0.16^{stat.} pm 0.31^{syst.} times 10^{14} M_odot$). We identify the ongoing merger and how it is affecting differently the gas properties in the resolved azimuthal sectors. We have several indications that the merger has injected a high level of non-thermal pressure in this system: the clumping free density profile is above the average profile obtained by stacking Rosat observations; the gas mass fraction exceeds the expected cosmic gas fraction beyond $R_{500}$; the pressure profile is flatter than the fit obtained by the Planck collaboration; the entropy profile is flatter than the mean one predicted from non-radiative simulations; the analysis in azimuthal sectors has revealed that these deviations occur in a preferred region of the cluster. All these tensions are resolved by requiring a relative support of about 40 per cent from non-thermal to the total pressure at $R_{200}$.
Galaxy clusters provide us with important information about the cosmology of our universe. Observations of the X-ray radiation or of the SZ effect allow us to measure the density and temperature of the hot intergalactic medium between the galaxies in a cluster, which then allow us to calculate the total mass of the galaxy cluster. However, no simple connection between the density and the temperature profiles has been identified. Here we use controlled high-resolution numerical simulations to identify a relation between the density and temperature of the gas in equilibrated galaxy clusters. We demonstrate that the temperature-density relation is a real attractor, by showing that a wide range of equilibrated structures all move towards the attractor when perturbed and subsequently allowed to relax. For structures which have undergone sufficient perturbations for this connection to hold, one can therefore extract the mass profile directly from the X-ray intensity profile.
Clusters of galaxies are the most massive gravitationally-bound objects in the Universe and are still forming. They are thus important probes of cosmological parameters and a host of astrophysical processes. Knowledge of the dynamics of the pervasive hot gas, which dominates in mass over stars in a cluster, is a crucial missing ingredient. It can enable new insights into mechanical energy injection by the central supermassive black hole and the use of hydrostatic equilibrium for the determination of cluster masses. X-rays from the core of the Perseus cluster are emitted by the 50 million K diffuse hot plasma filling its gravitational potential well. The Active Galactic Nucleus of the central galaxy NGC1275 is pumping jetted energy into the surrounding intracluster medium, creating buoyant bubbles filled with relativistic plasma. These likely induce motions in the intracluster medium and heat the inner gas preventing runaway radiative cooling; a process known as Active Galactic Nucleus Feedback. Here we report on Hitomi X-ray observations of the Perseus cluster core, which reveal a remarkably quiescent atmosphere where the gas has a line-of-sight velocity dispersion of 164+/-10 km/s in a region 30-60 kpc from the central nucleus. A gradient in the line-of-sight velocity of 150+/-70 km/s is found across the 60 kpc image of the cluster core. Turbulent pressure support in the gas is 4% or less of the thermodynamic pressure, with large scale shear at most doubling that estimate. We infer that total cluster masses determined from hydrostatic equilibrium in the central regions need little correction for turbulent pressure.
Galaxy groups differ from clusters primarily by way of their lower masses, M~10^14 M_sun vs. M~10^15 M_sun. We discuss how mass affects the thermal state of the intracluster or the intragroup medium, specifically as to their entropy levels and radial profiles. We show that entropy is produced in both cases by the continuing inflow of intergalactic gas across the system boundary into the gravitational potential well. The inflow is highly supersonic in clusters, but weakly so in groups. The former condition implies strong accretion shocks with substantial conversion of a large inflow kinetic into thermal energy, whereas the latter condition implies less effective conversion of lower energies. These features produce a conspicuous difference in entropy deposition at the current boundary. Thereafter, adiabatic compression of the hot gas into the potential well converts such time histories into radial profiles throughout a cluster or a group. In addition, in both cases a location of the system at low z in the accelerating universe or in a poor environment will starve out the inflow and the entropy production, and produce flattening or even bending down of the outer profile. We analyze in detail the sharp evidence provided by the two groups ESO 3060170 and RXJ1159+5531 that have been recently observed in X rays out to their virial radii, and find a close and detailed match with our expectations.