No Arabic abstract
Using a large redshift survey covering 95 square degrees, we demonstrate that the infall region of Abell 2199 contains Abell 2197, one or two X-ray emitting groups, and up to five additional groups identified in redshift surveys. Our survey shows that the X-ray emitting systems, located at projected radii of $1.^circ4, 1.^circ9$, and $5.^circ1$ (2.2, 3.1, and $8.0 h^{-1}$Mpc), are connected kinematically to A2199. A2197 is itself an optically rich cluster; its weak X-ray emission suggests that it is much less massive than A2199. The absence of a sharp peak in the infall pattern at the position of A2197 supports this hypothesis. The outermost group is well outside the virial region of A2199 and it distorts the infall pattern in redshift space. The two X-ray emitting groups are roughly colinear, suggesting the existence of an extended ($8.0 h^{-1}$Mpc) filament. The identification of these infalling groups provides direct support of hierarchical structure formation; studies of these systems will provide insights into structure evolution. Groups in the infall regions of nearby clusters may offer a unique probe of the physics of the warm/hot ionized medium (WHIM) which is difficult to observe directly with current instruments.
Galaxy clusters are expected to form hierarchically in a LCDM universe, growing primarily through mergers with lower mass clusters and the continual accretion of group-mass halos. Galaxy clusters assemble late, doubling their masses since z~0.5, and so the outer regions of clusters should be replete with infalling group-mass systems. We present an XMM-Newton survey to search for X-ray groups in the infall regions of 23 massive galaxy clusters at z~0.2, identifying 39 X-ray groups that have been spectroscopically confirmed to lie at the cluster redshift. These groups have mass estimates in the range 2x10^13-7x10^14Msun, and group-to-cluster mass ratios as low as 0.02. The comoving number density of X-ray groups in the infall regions is ~25x higher than that seen for isolated X-ray groups from the XXL survey. The average mass per cluster contained within these X-ray groups is 2.2x10^14Msun, or 19% of the mass within the primary cluster itself. We estimate that ~10^15Msun clusters increase their masses by 16% between z=0.223 and the present day due to the accretion of groups with M200>10^13.2Msun. This represents about half of the expected mass growth rate of clusters at these late epochs. The other half is likely to come from smooth accretion of matter not bound in halos. The mass function of the infalling X-ray groups appears significantly top-heavy with respect to that of field X-ray systems, consistent with expectations from numerical simulations, and the basic consequences of collapsed massive dark matter halos being biased tracers of the underlying large-scale density distribution.
We report on a spatially resolved analysis of Chandra X-ray data on a nearby typical cooling flow cluster of galaxies 2A 0335+096, together with A 2199 for a comparison. As recently found in the cores of other clusters, the temperature around the central part of 2A 0335+096 is 1.3--1.5 keV, which is higher than that inferred from the cooling flow picture. Furthermore, the absorption column density is almost constant against the radius in 2A 0335+096; there is no evidence of excess absorption up to 200--250 kpc. This indicates that no significant amount of cold material, which has cooled down, is present. These properties are similar to those of A 2199. Since the cooling time in the central part is much shorter than the age of the clusters, a heating mechanism, which weakens the effect of radiative cooling, is expected to be present in the central part of both clusters of galaxies. Both 2A 0335+096 and A 2199 have radio jets associated with their cD galaxy. We discuss the possibility of heating processes caused by these radio jets by considering the thermal conduction and the sound velocity together with the observed disturbance of the ICM temperature and density. We conclude that the observed radio jets can produce local heating and/or cooling, but do not sufficiently reduce the overall radiative cooling. This implies that much more violent jets, whose emission has now decayed, heated up the cooling gas $>10^9$ years ago.
We report the detection of a rapid occultation event in the nearby Seyfert galaxy NGC 6814, simultaneously captured in a transient light curve and spectral variability. The intensity and hardness ratio curves capture distinct ingress and egress periods that are symmetric in duration. Independent of the selected continuum model, the changes can be simply described by varying the fraction of the central engine that is covered by transiting obscuring gas. Together, the spectral and timing analyses self-consistently reveal the properties of the obscuring gas, its location to be in the broad line region (BLR), and the size of the X-ray source to be ~25 rg . Our results demonstrate that obscuration close to massive black holes can shape their appearance, and can be harnessed to measure the active region that surrounds the event horizon.
We performed B and R band surface photometry for E/S0 galaxies in a nearby rich cluster ABELL 2199 to investigate their B-R color gradients (d(B-R)/dlogr). Our aims are to study statistical properties of the color gradients and, by comparing them with those in less dense environments, to examine environmental dependence of color gradients in elliptical galaxies. We studied the distribution of the B-R color gradients in the cluster ellipticals and found that the mean value of the color gradients is -0.09 +- 0.04 mag/dex, which can be converted to a metallicity gradient (dlogZ/dlogr) of ~ -0.3 +- 0.1 assuming an old stellar population. We further studied the relations between the B-R color gradients and global properties of the galaxies. Our data suggest that for the galaxies brighter than L*, more luminous and larger galaxies tend to have steeper color gradients. The typical value of the color gradients seems to be consistent with a recent monolithic collapse model and the correlation could also appear if elliptical galaxies formed through the monolithic collapse. On the contrary, it is found based on data from the literature that any such trend is clearly weaker for ellipticals in less dense environments, while the distribution of the color gradients is quite similar to that found in the rich cluster. Based on the results from our data and the published data, we discuss formation process of elliptical galaxy and its environmental dependence.
X-ray fluorescent lines are unique features of the reflection spectrum of the torus when irradiated by the central AGN. Their intrinsic line width can be used to probe the line-emitting region. Previous studies have focused on the Fe Ka line at 6.4 keV, which is the most prominent fluorescent line. These studies, however, are limited by the spectral resolution of currently available instruments, the best of which is $sim1860$ km s$^{-1}$ afforded by the Chandra High-Energy Grating (HEG). The HEG spectral resolution is improved by a factor of 4 at 1.74 keV, where the Si Ka line is located. We measured the FWHM of the Si Ka line for Circinus, Mrk 3, and NGC 1068, which are $570pm240$, $730pm320$, and $320pm280$ km s$^{-1}$, respectively. They are $3-5$ times smaller than those measured with the Fe Ka line previously. It shows that the intrinsic widths of the Fe Ka line are most likely to be over-estimated. The measured widths of the Si Ka line put the line-emitting region outside the dust sublimation radius in these galaxies. It indicates that for Compton-thick AGN, the X-ray fluorescence material are likely to be the same as the dusty torus emitting in the infrared.