Galaxy clusters are the largest and most massive bound objects resulting from cosmic hierarchical structure formation. Baryons account for somewhat more than 10% of that mass, with roughly 90% of the baryonic matter distributed throughout the clusters as hot ($T>1$ keV), high-$β$, very weakly collisional plasma; the so-called "intracluster medium" (ICM). Cluster mergers, close gravitational encounters and accretion, along with violent feedback from galaxies and relativistic jets from active galactic nuclei, drive winds, gravity waves, turbulence and shocks within the ICM. Those dynamics, in turn, generate cluster-scale magnetic fields and accelerate and mediate the transport of high-energy charged particles. Kinetic-scale, collective plasma processes define the basic character and fundamental signatures of these ICM phenomena, which are observed primarily by X-ray and radio astronomers.
Radio galaxies play an important role in the seeding of cosmic rays and magnetic fields in galaxy clusters. Here, we simulate the evolution of relativistic electrons injected into the intracluster medium by radio galaxies. Using passive tracer particles added to magnetohydrodynamical adaptive-mesh simulations, we calculate the evolution of the spectrum of relativistic electrons taking into account energy losses and re-acceleration mechanisms associated with the dynamics of the intracluster medium. Re-acceleration can occur at shocks via diffusive shock acceleration, and in turbulent flows via …
We consider the problem of self-regulated heating and cooling in galaxy clusters and the implications for cluster magnetic fields and turbulence. Viscous heating of a weakly collisional magnetised plasma is regulated by the pressure anisotropy with respect to the local direction of the magnetic field. The intracluster medium is a high-beta plasma, where pressure anisotropies caused by the turbulent stresses and the consequent local changes in the magnetic field will trigger very fast microscale instabilities. We argue that the net effect of these instabilities will be to pin the pressure aniso…
Turbulence in the weakly collisional intracluster medium of galaxies (ICM) is able to generate strong thermal velocity anisotropies in the ions (with respect to the local magnetic field direction), if the magnetic moment of the particles is conserved in the absence of Coulomb collisions. In this scenario, the anisotropic pressure magnetohydrodynamic (AMHD) turbulence shows a very different statistical behaviour from the standard MHD one and is unable to amplify seed magnetic fields, in disagreement with previous cosmological MHD simulations which are successful to explain the observed magnetic…
The results from Suzaku observations of the central region of the Perseus cluster are presented. Deep exposures with the X-ray Imaging Spectrometer provide high quality X-ray spectra from the intracluster medium. X-ray lines from helium-like Cr and Mn have been detected significantly for the first time in clusters. In addition, elemental abundances of Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ar, Ca, Fe, and Ni are accurately measured within 10' (or 220 kpc) from the cluster center. The relative abundance ratios are found to be within a range of 0.8-1.5 times the solar value. These abundance ratios are compared with pre…
Galaxy clusters host the largest particle accelerators in the Universe: Shock waves in the intracluster medium (ICM), a hot and ionised plasma, that accelerate particles to high energies. Radio observations pick up synchrotron emission in the ICM, proving the existence of accelerated cosmic-ray electrons. However, a sign of cosmic-ray protons, in form of $γ$-rays. remains undetected. This is know as the missing $γ$-ray problem and it directly challenges the shock acceleration mechanism at work in the ICM. Over the last decade, theoretical and numerical studies focused on improving our knowledg…
Galactic jets are powerful energy sources reheating the intra-cluster medium in galaxy clusters. Their crucial role in the cosmic puzzle, motivated by observations, has been established by a great number of numerical simulations missing the relativistic nature of these jets. We present the first relativistic simulations of the very long term evolution of realistic galactic jets. Unexpectedly, our results show no buoyant bubbles, but large cocoon regions compatible with the observed X-ray cavities. The reheating is more efficient and faster than in previous scenarios, and it is produced by the …
The origin of magnetic fields in clusters of galaxies is still an unsolved problem, which is largely due to our poor understanding of initial seed magnetic fields. If the seed magnetic fields have primordial origins, it is likely that large-scale pervasive magnetic fields were present before the formation of the large-scale structure. On the other hand, if they were ejected from astrophysical bodies, they were highly localized in space at the time of injection. In this paper, using turbulence dynamo models for high magnetic Prandtl number fluids, we find constraints on the seed magnetic fields…
Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy clusters are still challenged to produce a model for the intracluster medium that matches all aspects of current X-ray and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich observations. To facilitate such comparisons with future simulations and to enable realistic cluster population studies for modeling e.g., non-thermal emission processes, we construct a phenomenological model for the intracluster medium that is based on a representative sample of observed X-ray clusters. We create a mock galaxy cluster catalog based on the large collisionless N-body simulation MultiDark, …
We have performed the first three-dimensional relativistic hydrodynamic simulations of extragalactic jets of pure leptonic and baryonic plasma compositions propagating into a hydrostatic intracluster medium environment. The numerical simulations use a general equation of state for a multi-component relativistic gas which closely reproduces the Synge equation of state for a relativistic perfect gas. We find that morphological and dynamical differences between leptonic and baryonic jets are much less evident than those between hot and cold jets. In all these models, the jets first propagate with…
Clusters of galaxies are the most massive virialized structures in the Universe. The microphysical properties of the intracluster plasma can affect dynamical processes over an enormous range: from the feedback of active galactic nuclei to shock acceleration in merging clusters. All the major cosmological simulations assume the astrophysical plasma to be inviscid. It is critical to measure microphysical properties of the intracluster plasma to truly understand the physical processes that drive the cosmic evolution. Tremendous progress has been made by comparing high spatial resolution X-ray ima…
Understanding the thermodynamic state of the hot intracluster medium (ICM) in a galaxy cluster requires a knowledge of the plasma transport processes, especially thermal conduction. The basic physics of thermal conduction in plasmas with ICM-like conditions has yet to be elucidated, however. We use particle-in-cell simulations and analytic models to explore the dynamics of an ICM-like plasma (with small gyroradius, large mean-free-path, and strongly sub-dominant magnetic pressure) driven by the diffusive heat flux associated with thermal conduction. Lin- ear theory reveals that whistler waves …
Clusters of galaxies provide a closed box within which one can determine the chemical evolution of the gaseous baryons with cosmic time. We studied this metallicity evolution in the hot X-ray emitting baryons through an analysis of XMM-Newton observations of 29 galaxy clusters in the redshift range 0.3 < z < 1.3. Taken alone, this data set does not show evidence for significant evolution. However, when we also include a comparable sample of 115 clusters observed with Chandra (Maughan et al. 2008) and a lower redshift sample of 70 clusters observed with XMM at z < 0.3 (Snowden et al. 2008), the…
We present three dimensional relativistic hydrodynamical simulations of a precessing jet interacting with the intracluster medium and compare the simulated jet structure with the observed structure of the Hydra A northern jet. For the simulations, we use jet parameters obtained in the parameter space study of the first paper in this series and probe different values for the precession period and precession angle. We find that for a precession period P = 1 Myr and a precession angle = 20 degree the model reproduces i) the curvature of the jet, ii) the correct number of bright knots within 20 kp…
In the intracluster medium (ICM) of galaxy clusters, heat and momentum are transported almost entirely along (but not across) magnetic field lines. We perform the first fully self-consistent Braginskii-MHD simulations of galaxy clusters including both of these effects. Specifically, we perform local and global simulations of the magnetothermal instability (MTI) and the heat-flux-driven buoyancy instability (HBI) and assess the effects of viscosity on their saturation and astrophysical implications. We find that viscosity has only a modest effect on the saturation of the MTI. As in previous cal…
We simulate the evolution of relativistic electrons injected into the medium of a small galaxy cluster by a central radio galaxy, studying how the initial jet power affects the dispersal and the emission properties of radio plasma. By coupling passive tracer particles to adaptive-mesh cosmological MHD simulations, we study how cosmic-ray electrons are dispersed as a function of the input jet power. We also investigate how the latter affects the thermal and non-thermal properties of the intracluster medium, with differences discernible up to $\sim$ Gyr after the start of the jet. We evolved the…
The intracluster medium (ICM) is stably stratified in the hydrodynamic sense with the entropy $s$ increasing outwards. However, thermal conduction along magnetic field lines fundamentally changes the stability of the ICM, leading to the "heat-flux buoyancy instability" when $dT/dr>0$ and the "magnetothermal instability" when $dT/dr<0$. The ICM is thus buoyantly unstable regardless of the signs of $dT/dr$ and $ds/dr$. On the other hand, these temperature-gradient-driven instabilities saturate by reorienting the magnetic field (perpendicular to $\hat{\bf r}$ when $dT/dr>0$ and parallel to $\hat{…
Four decades ago, the firm detection of an Fe-K emission feature in the X-ray spectrum of the Perseus cluster revealed the presence of iron in its hot intracluster medium (ICM). With more advanced missions successfully launched over the last 20 years, this discovery has been extended to many other metals and to the hot atmospheres of many other galaxy clusters, groups, and giant elliptical galaxies, as evidence that the elemental bricks of life - synthesized by stars and supernovae - are also found at the largest scales of the Universe. Because the ICM, emitting in X-rays, is in collisional io…
We present a deep Suzaku observation of H1821+643, an extremely rare example of a powerful quasar hosted by the central massive galaxy of a rich cooling-core cluster of galaxies. Informed by previous Chandra studies of the cluster, we achieve a spectral separation of emission from the active galactic nucleus (AGN) and the intracluster medium (ICM). With a high degree of confidence, we identify the signatures of X-ray reflection/reprocessing by cold and slowly moving material in the AGN's immediate environment. The iron abundance of this matter is found to be significantly sub-solar (Z~0.4Zsun)…
The active galaxy NGC1275 lies at the centre of the Perseus cluster of galaxies, which is the X-ray brightest cluster in the Sky. The nucleus shows large variability over the past few decades. We compile a lightcurve of its X-ray emission covering about 40 years and show that the bright phase around 1980 explains why the inner X-ray bubbles were not seen in the images taken with the Einstein Observatory. The flux had dropped considerably by 1992 when images with the ROSAT HRI led to their discovery. The nucleus is showing a slow X-ray rise since the first Chandra images in 2000. If it brighten…
The Fanaroff-Riley class II radio galaxy Cygnus A hosts jets which produce radio emission, X-ray cavities, cocoon shocks, and X-ray hotspots where the jet interacts with the ICM. Surrounding one hotspot is a peculiar "hole" feature which appears as a deficit in X-ray emission. We use relativistic hydrodynamic simulations of a collimated jet interacting with an inclined interface between lobe and cluster plasma to model the basic processes which may lead to such a feature. We find that the jet reflects off of the interface into a broad, turbulent flow back out into the lobe, which is dominated …
We present a detailed study of the thermodynamic properties of the intracluster medium of the only low redshift galaxy cluster to contain a highly luminous quasar, H1821+643. The cluster is a highly massive, strong cool core cluster. We find that the ICM entropy around the quasar is significantly lower than that of other similarly massive strong cool core clusters within the central 80 kpc, and that the entropy lies significantly below the extrapolated baseline entropy profile from hierarchical structure formation. By comparing the scaled temperature profile with those of other strong cool cor…
Accurate chemical abundance measurements of X-ray emitting atmospheres pervading massive galaxies, galaxy groups, and clusters provide essential information on the star formation and chemical enrichment histories of these large scale structures. Although the collisionally ionised nature of the intracluster medium (ICM) makes these abundance measurements relatively easy to derive, underlying spectral models can rely on different atomic codes, which brings additional uncertainties on the inferred abundances. Here, we provide a simple, yet comprehensive comparison between the codes SPEXACT v3.0.5…
Transport equations for electron thermal energy in the high $β_e$ intracluster medium (ICM) are developed that include scattering from both classical collisions and self-generated whistler waves. The calculation employs an expansion of the kinetic electron equation along the ambient magnetic field in the limit of strong scattering and assumes whistler waves with low phase speeds $V_w\sim{v}_{te}/β_e\ll{v}_{te}$ dominate the turbulent spectrum, with $v_{te}$ the electron thermal speed and $β_e\gg1$ the ratio of electron thermal to magnetic pressure. We find: (1) temperature-gradient-driven whis…
We use adaptive-mesh magnetohydrodynamic simulations to study the effect of magnetic fields on ram pressure stripping of galaxies in the intracluster medium (ICM). Although the magnetic pressure in typical clusters is not strong enough to affect the gas mass loss rate from galaxies, magnetic fields can affect the morphology of stripped galaxies. ICM magnetic fields are draped around orbiting galaxies and aligned with their stripped tails. Magnetic fields suppress shear instabilities at the galaxy-ICM interface, and magnetized tails are smoother and narrower than tails in comparable hydrodynami…
Central jetted active galactic nuclei (AGN) appear to heat the core regions of the intracluster medium (ICM) in cooling-core galaxy clusters and groups, thereby preventing a cooling catastrophe. However, the physical mechanism(s) by which the directed flow of kinetic energy is thermalized throughout the ICM core remains unclear. We examine one widely discussed mechanism whereby the AGN induces subsonic turbulence in the ambient medium, the dissipation of which provides the ICM heat source. Through controlled inviscid 3-d hydrodynamic simulations, we verify that explosive AGN-like events can la…
Statistical analysis of Faraday Rotation Measure (RM) maps of the intracluster medium (ICM) of galaxy clusters provides a unique tool to evaluate some spatial features of the magnetic fields there. Its combination with numerical simulations of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence allows the diagnosis of the ICM turbulence. Being the ICM plasma weakly collisional, the thermal velocity distribution of the particles naturally develops anisotropies as a consequence of the large scale motions and the conservation of the magnetic moment of the charged particles. A previous study (Paper I) analyzed t…
We present the first stage of an investigation of the interactions of the jets in the radio galaxy Hydra A with the intracluster medium. We consider the jet kinetic power, the galaxy and cluster atmosphere, and the inner structure of the radio source. Analysing radio observations of the inner lobes of Hydra A by Taylor et al. (1990) we confirm the jet power estimates of about 1e45 ergs/s derived by Wise et al. (2007) from dynamical analysis of the X-ray cavities. With this result and a model for the galaxy halo, we explore the jet-intracluster medium interactions occurring on a scale of 10 kpc…
Radio relics associated with merging galaxy clusters indicate the acceleration of relativistic electrons in merger-driven shocks with low sonic Mach numbers ($M_{\rm s}\lesssim 3$) in the intracluster medium (ICM). Recent studies have suggested that electron injection to diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) could take place through the so-called Fermi-like acceleration in the shock foot of $β=P_{\rm gas}/P_{\rm B}\approx 20-100$ shocks and the stochastic shock drift acceleration (SSDA) in the shock transition of $β\approx 1-5$ shocks. Here we explore how the SSDA can facilitate electron preaccel…
I conduct simple analytical estimates and conclude that mixing by vortices is a more efficient process to transfer the cosmic ray energy of jet-inflated bubbles to the intracluster medium (ICM) than streaming of cosmic rays along magnetic field lines. Jets and the bubbles they inflate transfer heat to the ambient gas in cooling flows in cluster of galaxies and in galaxies. The internal energy of the jet-inflated bubbles is dominate by very hot thermal gas and/or cosmic rays. Cosmic rays that stream along magnetic field lines that connect the bubbles with the ICM heat the ICM as their energy is…
Feeding and feedback of active galactic nuclei (AGN) are critical for understanding the dynamics and thermodynamics of the intracluster medium (ICM) within the cores of galaxy clusters. While radio bubbles inflated by AGN jets could be dynamically supported by cosmic rays (CRs), the impact of CR-dominated jets are not well understood. In this work, we perform three-dimensional simulations of CR-jet feedback in an isolated cluster atmosphere; we find that CR jets impact the multiphase gas differently than jets dominated by kinetic energy. In particular, CR bubbles can more efficiently uplift th…
X-ray observations of hot gas in galaxy clusters often show steeper temperature gradients across cold fronts -- contact discontinuities, driven by the differential gas motions. These sharp (a few kpc wide) surface brightness/temperature discontinuities would be quickly smeared out by the electron thermal conduction in unmagnetized plasma, suggesting significant suppression of the heat flow across the discontinuities. In fact, the character of the gas flow near cold fronts is favorable for suppression of conduction by aligning magnetic field lines along the discontinuities. We argue that a simi…
We investigate the interaction between active galactic nuclei (AGN) jets and the intracluster medium (ICM) of galaxy clusters. Specifically, we study the efficiency with which jets can drive sound waves into the ICM. Previous works focused on this issue model the jet-ICM interaction as a spherically symmetric explosion, finding that <~ 12.5% of the blast energy is converted into sound waves, even for instantaneous energy injection. We develop a method for measuring sound wave energy in hydrodynamic simulations and measure the efficiency of sound wave driving by supersonic jets in a model ICM. …
Buoyant bubbles of relativistic plasma in cluster cores plausibly play a key role in conveying the energy from a supermassive black hole to the intracluster medium (ICM) - the process known as radio-mode AGN feedback. Energy conservation guarantees that a bubble loses most of its energy to the ICM after crossing several pressure scale heights. However, actual processes responsible for transferring the energy to the ICM are still being debated. One attractive possibility is the excitation of internal waves, which are trapped in the cluster's core and eventually dissipate. Here we show that a su…
The assumption of a spatially uniform helium distribution in the intracluster medium can lead to biases in the estimates of key cluster parameters if composition gradients are present. The helium concentration profile in galaxy clusters is unfortunately not directly observable. Current models addressing the putative sedimentation are one-dimensional and parametrize the presence of magnetic fields in a crude way, ignoring the weakly-collisional, magnetized nature of the medium. When these effects are considered, a wide variety of instabilities can play an important role in the plasma dynamics. …
Giant radio relics in the outskirts of galaxy clusters are known to be lit up by the relativistic electrons produced via diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) in shocks with low sonic Mach numbers, $M_{\rm s}\lesssim3$. The particle acceleration at these collisionless shocks critically depends on the kinetic plasma processes that govern the injection to DSA. Here, we study the preacceleration of suprathermal electrons in weak, quasi-perpendicular ($Q_\perp$) shocks in the hot, high-$β$ ($β= P_{\rm gas}/P_{\rm B}$) intracluster medium (ICM) through two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. \ci…
Feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) is believed to prevent catastrophic cooling in galaxy clusters. However, how the feedback energy is transformed into heat, and how the AGN jets heat the intracluster medium (ICM) isotropically, still remain elusive. In this work, we gain insights into the relative importance of different heating mechanisms using three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations including cold gas accretion and momentum-driven jet feedback, which are the most successful models to date in terms reproducing the properties of cool cores. We find that there is net heating within …
