Related papers: Gravitational Quenching by Clumpy Accretion in Coo…
We consider a simple gravitational-heating mechanism for the long-term quenching of cooling flows and star formation in massive dark-matter haloes hosting ellipticals and clusters. The virial shock heating in haloes >10^12 Mo triggers…
There is no shortage of energy around to solve the overcooling problem of cooling flow clusters. AGNs, as well as gravitational energy are both energetic enough to balance the cooling of cores of clusters. The challenge is to couple this…
Recent observations by Chandra and XMM-Newton demonstrate that the central gas in "cooling flow" galaxy clusters has a mass cooling rate that decreases rapidly with decreasing temperature. This contrasts the predictions of a steady state…
Feedback heating from active galactic nuclei (AGNs) has been commonly invoked to suppress cooling flows predicted in hot gas in elliptical galaxies, galaxy groups and clusters. Previous studies have focused on if and how AGN feedback heats…
The cooling-flow problem is a long-standing puzzle that has received considerable recent attention, in part because the mechanism that quenches cooling flows in galaxy clusters is likely to be the same mechanism that sharply truncates the…
In the hierarchical scenario of structure formation, galaxy clusters are the ultimate virialised products in mass and time. Hot baryons in the intracluster medium (ICM) and cold baryons in galaxies inhabit a dark matter dominated halo.…
Two lines of evidence indicate that active galaxies, principally radio galaxies, have heated the diffuse hot gas in clusters. The first is the general need for additional heating to explain the steepness of the X-ray luminosity--temperature…
X-ray observations of clusters of galaxies reveal the presence of edges in surface brightness and temperature, known as "cold fronts". In relaxed clusters with cool cores, these commonly observed edges have been interpreted as evidence for…
We use hydrodynamic simulations with adaptive grid refinement to study the dependence of hot gas flows in X-ray luminous giant elliptical galaxies on the efficiency of heat supply to the gas. We consider a number of potential heating…
The gas in the cores of many clusters and groups of galaxies has a short radiative cooling time. Energy from the central black hole is observed to flow into this gas by means of jets, bubbles and sound waves. Cooling is thus offset by…
Unopposed radiative cooling in clusters of galaxies results in excessive mass deposition rates. However, the cool cores of galaxy clusters are continuously heated by thermal conduction and turbulent heat diffusion due to minor mergers or…
The time scale for cooling of the gravitationally bound gaseous intracluster medium (ICM) is not determined by radiative processes alone. If the ICM is in quasi-hydrostatic equilibrium in the fixed gravitational field of the dark matter…
The absence of large cooling flows in cool core clusters appears to require self-regulated energy feedback by active galactic nuclei (AGNs) but the exact heating mechanism has not yet been identified. Here, we analyse whether a combination…
Cooling flows in galaxy clusters and isolated elliptical galaxies are a source of mass for fueling accretion onto a central supermassive black hole. We calculate the dynamics of accreting matter in the combined gravitational potential of a…
The strong deviation in the properties of X-ray clusters from simple scaling laws highlights the importance of non-gravitational heating and cooling processes in the evolution of proto-cluster gas. We investigate this from two directions:…
It is now generally agreed that some process prevents the diffuse gas in galaxy clusters from cooling significantly, although there is less agreement about the nature of this process. I suggest that cluster gas may be heated by a natural…
Recent observations show that the cooling flows in the central regions of galaxy clusters are highly suppressed. Observed AGN-induced cavities/bubbles are a leading candidate for suppressing cooling, usually via some form of mechanical…
Activities of a supermassive black hole or active galactic nucleus in the central galaxy of a cluster of galaxies have been promising candidates for heating sources of cool cluster cores. We estimate the masses of black holes using known…
We investigate heating of the cool core of a galaxy cluster through the dissipation of sound waves excited by the activities of the central active galactic nucleus (AGN). Using a weak shock theory, we show that this heating mechanism alone…
The discrepancy between expected and observed cooling rates of X-ray emitting gas has led to the {\it cooling flow problem} at the cores of clusters of galaxies. A variety of models have been proposed to model the observed X-ray spectra and…