Probing Macro-Scale Gas Motions and Turbulence in Diffuse Cosmic Plasmas
Abstract
Clusters of galaxies, the largest collapsed structures in the Universe, are located at the intersection of extended filaments of baryons and dark matter. Cosmological accretion onto clusters through large scale filaments adds material at cluster outskirts. Kinetic energy in the form of bulk motions and turbulence due to this accretion provides a form of pressure support against gravity, supplemental to thermal pressure. Significant amount of non-thermal pressure support could bias cluster masses derived assuming hydrostatic equilibrium, the primary proxy for cluster cosmology studies. Sensitive measurements of Doppler broadening and shift of astrophysical lines, and the relative fluctuations in thermodynamical quantities (e.g., density, pressure, and entropy) are primary diagnostic tools. Forthcoming planned and proposed X-ray (with large etendue, throughput, and high spectral resolution) and SZ observatories will provide crucial information on the assembly and virialisation processes of clusters, involving turbulent eddies cascading at various spatial scales and larger gas bulk motions in their external regions to the depth or their potential wells.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1903.04597,
title = {Probing Macro-Scale Gas Motions and Turbulence in Diffuse Cosmic Plasmas},
author = {Esra Bulbul and Massimo Gaspari and Gabriella Alvarez and Camille Avestruz and Mark Bautz and Brad Benson and Veronica Biffi and Douglas Burke and Nicolas Clerc and Urmila Chadayammuri and Eugene Churazov and Edoardo Cucchetti and Dominique Eckert and Stefano Ettori and Bill Forman and Fabio Gastaldello and Vittorio Ghirardini and Ralph Kraft and Maxim Markevitch and Mike McDonald and Eric Miller and Tony Mroczkowski and Daisuke Nagai and Paul Nulsen and Gabriel W. Pratt and Scott Randall and Thomas Reiprich and Mauro Roncarelli and Aurora Simionescu and Randall Smith and Grant Tremblay and Stephen Walker and Irina Zhuravleva and John ZuHone},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.04597},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
5 pages, 3 figures, Science white paper submitted to the Astro2020 Decadal Survey