English

Substructures associated with the sloshing cold front in the Perseus cluster

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2018-12-12 v2

Abstract

X-ray substructures in clusters of galaxies provide indirect clues about the microphysical properties of the intracluster medium (ICM), which are still not very well known. In order to investigate X-ray substructures in detail, we studied archival \sim1~Msec Chandra data of the core of the Perseus cluster, focusing on the substructures associated with the sloshing cold front. In the east half of the cold front, we found a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI) layer candidate. The measured width-to-azimuthal extension ratio and the thermodynamic properties are all consistent with it being a KHI layer currently developing along the sloshing cold front. We found a thermal pressure deficit of the order of 102 keV cm3^{-2}~\mathrm{keV~cm^{-3}} at the KHI layer. Assuming that turbulent pressure fully supports the pressure deficit, we estimated the turbulent strength at several hundred km~s1^{-1}, which translates into the turbulent heating rate of Qturb1026 erg cm3 s1Q_\mathrm{turb}\sim 10^{-26}~\mathrm{erg~cm^{-3}~s^{-1}}. This value agrees within an order of magnitude with the previous estimation derived from the surface brightness fluctuations, and can balance the radiative cooling at this radius. In the west half of the cold front, we found feather-like structures which are similar to the structures observed in recent numerical simulations of the gas sloshing of magnetized plasma. Their thermodynamic properties are consistent with one of the feathers being a projected gas depletion layer induced by the amplified magnetic field whose strength is BB\sim30 μG~\mathrm{\mu G}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1810.07380,
  title  = {Substructures associated with the sloshing cold front in the Perseus cluster},
  author = {Y. Ichinohe and A. Simionescu and N. Werner and A. C. Fabian and T. Takahashi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.07380},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in MNRAS

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