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Register a new userGalaxy clusters and the cosmic cycle of baryons across cosmic times
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We discuss the central role played by the X-ray study of hot baryons within galaxy clusters to reconstruct the assembly of cosmic structures and to trace the past history of star formation and accretion onto supermassive Black Holes (BHs). We shortly review the progress in this field contributed by the current generation of X-ray telescopes. Then, we focus on the outstanding scientific questions that have been opened by observations carried out in the last years and that represent the legacy of Chandra and XMM: (a) When and how is entropy injected into the inter-galactic medium (IGM)? (b) What is the history of metal enrichment of the IGM? (c) What physical mechanisms determine the presence of cool cores in galaxy clusters? (d) How is the appearance of proto-clusters at z~2 related to the peak of star formation activity and BH accretion? We show that a highly efficient observational strategy to address these questions is to carry out a large-area X-ray survey, reaching a sensitivity comparable to that of deep Chandra and XMM pointings, but extending over several thousands of square degrees. A similar survey can only be carried out with a Wide-Field X-ray Telescope (WFXT), which combines a high survey speed with a sharp PSF across the entire FoV. We emphasize the important synergies that WFXT will have with a number of future ground-based and space telescopes, covering from the radio to the X-ray bands. Finally, we discuss the immense legacy value that such a mission will have for extragalactic astronomy at large.
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Observations of the cosmic microwave background indicate that baryons account for 5% of the Universes total energy content. In the local Universe, the census of all observed baryons falls short of this estimate by a factor of two. Cosmological simulations indicate that the missing baryons might not have condensed into virialized haloes, but reside throughout the filaments of the cosmic web (where matter density is larger than average) as a low-density plasma at temperatures of $10^5-10^7$ kelvin, known as the warm-hot intergalactic medium. There have been previous claims of the detection of warm baryons along the line of sight to distant blazars and of hot gas between interacting clusters. These observations were, however, unable to trace the large-scale filamentary structure, or to estimate the total amount of warm baryons in a representative volume of the Universe. Here we report X-ray observations of filamentary structures of gas at $10^7$ kelvin associated with the galaxy cluster Abell 2744. Previous observations of this cluster were unable to resolve and remove coincidental X-ray point sources. After subtracting these, we reveal hot gas structures that are coherent over scales of 8 mergaparsecs. The filaments coincide with over-densities of galaxies and dark matter, with 5-10% of their mass in baryonic gas. This gas has been heated up by the clusters gravitational pull and is now feeding its core. Our findings strengthen evidence for a picture of the Universe in which a large fraction of the missing baryons reside in the filaments of the cosmic web.
We combine cosmological hydrodynamic simulations with analytic models to evaluate the role of galaxy-scale gravitational torques on the evolution of massive black holes at the centers of star-forming galaxies. We confirm and extend our earlier results to show that torque-limited growth yields black holes and host galaxies evolving on average along the Mbh-Mbulge relation from early times down to z = 0 and that convergence onto the scaling relation occurs independent of the initial conditions and with no need for mass averaging through mergers or additional self-regulation processes. Smooth accretion dominates the long-term evolution, with black hole mergers with mass ratios >1:5 representing typically a small fraction of the total growth. Winds from the accretion disk are required to eject significant mass to suppress black hole growth, but there is no need for coupling this wind to galactic-scale gas to regulate black holes in a non-linear feedback loop. Torque-limited growth yields a close-to-linear relation for the star formation rate and the black hole accretion rate averaged over galaxy evolution time scales. However, the SFR-AGN connection has significant scatter owing to strong variability of black hole accretion at all resolved time scales. Eddington ratios can be described by a broad lognormal distribution with median value evolving roughly as (1 + z)^1.9, suggesting a main sequence for black hole growth similar to the cosmic evolution of specific SFRs. Our results offer an attractive scenario consistent with available observations in which cosmological gas infall and transport of angular momentum in the galaxy by gravitational instabilities regulate the long-term co-evolution of black holes and star-forming galaxies.
This work investigates the alignment of galactic spins with the cosmic web across cosmic time using the cosmological hydrodynamical simulation Horizon-AGN. The cosmic web structure is extracted via the persistent skeleton as implemented in the DISPERSE algorithm. It is found that the spin of low-mass galaxies is more likely to be aligned with the filaments of the cosmic web and to lie within the plane of the walls while more massive galaxies tend to have a spin perpendicular to the axis of the filaments and to the walls. The mass transition is detected with a significance of 9 sigmas. This galactic alignment is consistent with the alignment of the spin of dark haloes found in pure dark matter simulations and with predictions from (anisotropic) tidal torque theory. However, unlike haloes, the alignment of low-mass galaxies is weak and disappears at low redshifts while the orthogonal spin orientation of massive galaxies is strong and increases with time, probably as a result of mergers. At fixed mass, alignments are correlated with galaxy morphology: the high-redshift alignment is dominated by spiral galaxies while elliptical centrals are mainly responsible for the perpendicular signal. These predictions for spin alignments with respect to cosmic filaments and unprecendently walls are successfully compared with existing observations. The alignment of the shape of galaxies with the different components of the cosmic web is also investigated. A coherent and stronger signal is found in terms of shape at high mass. The two regimes probed in this work induce competing galactic alignment signals for weak lensing, with opposite redshift and luminosity evolution. Understanding the details of these intrinsic alignments will be key to exploit future major cosmic shear surveys like Euclid or LSST.
Feedback processes by active galactic nuclei in the centres of galaxy clusters appear to prevent large-scale cooling flows and impede star formation. However, the detailed heating mechanism remains uncertain. One promising heating scenario invokes the dissipation of Alfven waves that are generated by streaming cosmic rays (CRs). In order to study this idea, we use three-dimensional magneto-hydrodynamical simulations with the AREPO code that follow the evolution of jet-inflated bubbles that are filled with CRs in a turbulent cluster atmosphere. We find that a single injection event produces the CR distribution and heating rate required for a successful CR heating model. As a bubble rises buoyantly, cluster magnetic fields drape around the leading interface and are amplified to strengths that balance the ram pressure. Together with helical magnetic fields in the bubble, this initially confines the CRs and suppresses the formation of interface instabilities. But as the bubble continues to rise, bubble-scale eddies significantly amplify radial magnetic filaments in its wake and enable CR transport from the bubble to the cooling intracluster medium. By varying the jet parameters, we obtain a rich and diverse set of jet and bubble morphologies ranging from Fanaroff-Riley type I-like (FRI) to FRII-like jets. We identify jet energy as the leading order parameter (keeping the ambient density profiles fixed), whereas jet luminosity is primarily responsible for setting the Mach numbers of shocks around FRII-like sources. Our simulations also produce FRI-like jets that inflate bubbles without detectable shocks and show morphologies consistent with cluster observations.
This paper has been withdrawn. I belatedly found that the alignment I saw in galaxy cluster axes was bogus. It turns out that it is due to a well-known effect called the Fingers of God that stretches out the redshifts of galaxies in a cluster due to their motion within the cluster. This would not cause an overall bias if the SDSS survey were complete, but there is no coverage toward right ascensions near 90 degrees or 270 deg. Thus the apparent alignment appears along 0 -- 180 deg.
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