English

Inflating Fat Bubbles in Clusters of Galaxies by Wide Jets

Astrophysics 2011-02-11 v1

Abstract

We conduct two-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of jets expanding in the intra-cluster medium (ICM). We find that for a fat, i.e. more or less spherical, bubble attached to the center to be formed the jet should have high momentum flux and a large opening angle. Typically, the half opening angle should be >50 degrees, and the large momentum flux requires a jet speed of \~10,000 km/sec. The inflation process involves vortices and local instabilities which mix some ICM with the hot bubble. These results predict that most of the gas inside the bubble has a temperature of 3x10^8<T<3x10^9 K, and that large quantities of the cooling gas in cooling flow clusters are expelled back to the intra-cluster medium, and heated up. The magnetic fields and relativistic electrons that produce the synchrotron radio emission might be formed in the shock wave of the jet.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0612760,
  title  = {Inflating Fat Bubbles in Clusters of Galaxies by Wide Jets},
  author = {Assaf Sternberg and Fabio Pizzolato and Noam Soker},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0612760},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

Submitted to ApJ Letters