English

Spiral-like structure in nearby clusters of galaxies

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2010-02-23 v2

Abstract

X-ray data analysis have found that fairly complex structures at cluster centres are more common than expected. Many of these structures have similar morphologies, which exhibit spiral-like substructure. It is not yet well known how these structures formed or are maintained. Understanding the origin of these spiral-like features at the centre of some clusters is the major motivation behind this work. We analyse deep \textit{Chandra} observations of 15 nearby galaxy clusters (0.01 <z< < z < 0.06), and use X-ray temperature and substructure maps to detect small features at the cores of the clusters. We detect spiral-like features at the centre of 7 clusters: A85, A426, A496, Hydra A cluster, Centaurus, Ophiuchus, and A4059. These patterns are similar to those found in numerical hydrodynamic simulations of cluster mergers with non-zero impact parameter. In some clusters of our sample, a strong radio source also occupies the inner region of the cluster, which indicates a possible connection between the two. Our investigation implies that these spiral-like structures may be caused by off-axis minor mergers. Since these features occur in regions of high density, they may confine radio emission from the central galaxy producing, in some cases, unusual radio morphology.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0911.3785,
  title  = {Spiral-like structure in nearby clusters of galaxies},
  author = {Tatiana F. Lagana and Felipe Andrade-Santos and Gastao B. Lima Neto},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0911.3785},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

14 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in A&A (Nov 17, 2009)