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arXiv 0810.4288astro-ph
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与星系团有关的低频射电晕

A low-frequency radio halo associated with a cluster of galaxies

G. Brunetti, S. Giacintucci, R. Cassano, W. Lane, D. Dallacasa, T. Venturi, N. Kassim, G. Setti, W. D. Cotton, M. Markevitch

摘要:

星系团是宇宙中最大的引力束缚天体,包含约10 ^15太阳质量的热(10^8 K)气体、星系和暗物质,典型体积约为10 Mpc ^3。磁场和相对论性粒子与气体混合在一起,这一点可以通过巨大的射电晕来揭示,射电晕是由星系团中心弥漫的百万分之一秒差距尺度的同步辐射产生的。射电晕需要发射的电子在原地加速(通过湍流),或者通过质子碰撞注入星系际介质(作为次级粒子)。它们只在一小部分具有复杂动力学的大规模集群中被发现,这表明这些机制与集群合并之间存在联系。在这里,我们报告了一个无线电晕在低频与合并集群阿贝尔521。这个晕有一个非常陡峭的无线电频谱,这意味着一个高频率的截止;这使得在1.4 GHz(所有其他已知的无线电晕都被最好地研究的频率)的观测中很难检测到这个晕。晕的光谱与相对论性电子的次级起源不一致,而是支持湍流加速,这表明宇宙中的许多无线电晕应该主要以低频发射。

英文摘要:

Clusters of galaxies are the largest gravitationally bound objects in the Universe, containing about 10^15 solar masses of hot (10^8 K) gas, galaxies and dark matter in a typical volume of about 10 Mpc^3. Magnetic fields and relativistic particles are mixed with the gas as revealed by giant radio haloes, which arise from diffuse, megaparsec-scale synchrotron radiation at cluster center. Radio haloes require that the emitting electrons are accelerated in situ (by turbulence), or are injected (as secondary particles) by proton collisions into the intergalactic medium. They are found only in a fraction of massive clusters that have complex dynamics, which suggests a connection between these mechanisms and cluster mergers. Here we report a radio halo at low frequencies associated with the merging cluster Abell 521. This halo has an extremely steep radio spectrum, which implies a high frequency cut-off; this makes the halo difficult to detect with observations at 1.4 GHz (the frequency at which all other known radio haloes have been best studied). The spectrum of the halo is inconsistent with a secondary origin of the relativistic electrons, but instead supports turbulent acceleration, which suggests that many radio haloes in the Universe should emit mainly at low frequencies.

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