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تسجيل مستخدم جديدMagnetorotational instability in cool cores of galaxy clusters
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C. Nipoti
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Clusters of galaxies are embedded in halos of optically thin, gravitationally stratified, weakly magnetized plasma at the systems virial temperature. Due to radiative cooling and anisotropic heat conduction, such intracluster medium (ICM) is subject to local instabilities, which are combinations of the thermal, magnetothermal and heat-flux-driven buoyancy instabilities. If the ICM rotates significantly, its stability properties are substantially modified and, in particular, also the magnetorotational instability (MRI) can play an important role. We study simple models of rotating cool-core clusters and we demonstrate that the MRI can be the dominant instability over significant portions of the clusters, with possible implications for the dynamics and evolution of the cool cores. Our results give further motivation for measuring the rotation of the ICM with future X-ray missions such as ASTRO-H and ATHENA.
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X-ray observations of many clusters of galaxies reveal the presence of edges in surface brightness and temperature, known as cold fronts. In relaxed clusters with cool cores, these edges have been interpreted as evidence for the sloshing of the core
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We present an ensemble X-ray analysis of systematic perturbations in the central hot gas properties for a sample of 28 nearby strong cool-core systems selected from the HIghest X-ray FLUx Galaxy Cluster Sample (HIFLUGCS). We analyze their cool-core f
eatures observed with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. All individual systems in our sample exhibit at least a pair of positive and negative excess perturbations in the X-ray residual image after subtracting the global brightness profile. We extract and analyze X-ray spectra of the intracluster medium (ICM) in the detected perturbed regions. To investigate possible origins of the gas perturbations, we characterize thermodynamic properties of the ICM in the perturbed regions and characterize their correlations between positive and negative excess regions. The best-fit relations for temperature and entropy show a clear offset from the one-to-one relation, $T_mathrm{neg}/T_mathrm{pos}=1.20^{+0.04}_{-0.03}$ and $K_mathrm{neg}/K_mathrm{pos}=1.43pm 0.07$, whereas the best-fit relation for pressure is found to be remarkably consistent with the one-to-one relation $P_mathrm{neg}=P_mathrm{pos}$, indicating that the ICM in the perturbed regions is in pressure equilibrium. These observed features in the HIFLUGCS sample are in agreement with the hypothesis that the gas perturbations in cool cores are generated by gas sloshing. We also analyze synthetic observations of perturbed cluster cores created from binary merger simulations, finding that the observed temperature ratio agrees with the simulations, $T_mathrm{neg}/T_mathrm{pos}sim 1.3$. We conclude that gas sloshing induced by infalling substructures plays a major role in producing the characteristic gas perturbations in cool cores. The ubiquitous presence of gas perturbations in cool cores may suggest a significant contribution of gas sloshing to suppressing runaway cooling of the ICM.
We present a systematic study of gas density perturbations in cool cores of high-mass galaxy clusters. We select 12 relaxed clusters from the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH) sample and analyze their cool core features observe
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Cool cores of some galaxy clusters exhibit faint radio minihalos. Their origin is unclear; their study has been limited by their small number. We undertook a systematic search for minihalos in a large sample of X-ray luminous clusters with high-quali
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