Related papers: Modeling Chandra X-ray observations of Galaxy Clus…
The Intra-Cluster Medium (ICM) is a rarefied, hot, highly ionized, metal rich, weakly magnetized plasma. In these proceeding, after having reviewed some basic ICM properties, I discuss recent results obtained with the BeppoSAX, XMM-Newton…
Galaxy cluster mergers are representative of a wide range of physics, making them an excellent probe of the properties of dark matter and the ionized plasma of the intracluster medium. To date, most studies have focused on mergers occurring…
Clusters of galaxies are massive enough to be considered representative samples of the Universe, and to retain all of the heavy elements synthesized in their constituent stars. Since most of these metals reside in hot plasma, X-ray…
Numerical simulations of variants of the CDM~model with different cosmological parameters are used to compare statistical measures such as mass spectra, merger processes, and autocorrelation functions, for different models with relevant…
Galaxy clusters are massive dark matter-dominated systems filled with X-ray emitting, optically thin plasma. Their large size and relative simplicity (at least as astrophysical objects go) make them a unique laboratory to measure some of…
Over the last decades, cosmological simulations of galaxy formation have been instrumental for advancing our understanding of structure and galaxy formation in the Universe. These simulations follow the non-linear evolution of galaxies…
Within the standard framework of structure formation, where clusters and groups of galaxies are built up from the merging of smaller systems, the physical properties of the intracluster medium, such as the gas temperature and the total…
Upcoming multi-wavelength astronomical surveys will soon discover all massive galaxy clusters and provide unprecedented constraints on cosmology and cluster astrophysics. In this paper, we investigate the constraining power of the…
I review recent progress in the study of the large-scale structure of the Universe through the distribution of clusters of galaxies, concentrating on new results using X-ray selected samples. After discussing the importance of understanding…
This contribution illustrates the study of galaxy clusters as astrophysical laboratories as well as probes for the large-scale structure of the Universe. Using the REFLEX Cluster Survey, the measurement of the statistics of the large-scale…
Galaxy clusters are an established and powerful test-bed for theories of both galaxy evolution and cosmology. Accurate interpretation of cluster observations often requires robust identification of the location of the centre. Using a…
We use two high resolution CDM simulations to show that (i) when clusters of galaxies form the infall pattern of matter is not random but shows clear features which are correlated in time; (ii) in addition, the infall patterns are…
In this work we show how galaxy clusters can be used to discriminate among different cosmological models. We have used available X-ray & optical cluster data to constrain the cosmological parameters as well as the cluster scaling relations,…
We present a self-consistent approach to the modeling of X-ray clusters of galaxies in a flat universe. Employing the Press and Schechter (1974) formalism to derive the mass function and relating the observable properties of clusters to…
Numerical simulations of cluster mergers reveal many characteristics of the merging process: shock structure and strength, observational signatures of the dynamical state, effects on the mass determination, turbulence and the evolution of…
The links between the internal structure of galaxy groups and clusters and cosmological parameters are reviewed here. The mass density profiles of clusters, inferred from both optical analyses of the galaxy surface number density profile…
We employ N--body/$3D$ gas dynamic simulations of the formation of galaxy clusters to determine whether cluster X--ray morphologies can be used as cosmological constraints. Confirming the analytic expectations of Richstone, Loeb, \& Turner,…
I review some important aspects of the structural and statistical properties of the nearby X-ray galaxy cluster population, discussing the new constraints on mass profiles, the mass-temperature relation, and the entropy of the intracluster…
Clusters of galaxies can be seen as giant astrophysical laboratories enclosing matter in a large enough volume, so that the matter composition can be taken as representing the composition of our Universe. X-ray observations allow a very…
In gaussian theories of structure formation, the galaxy cluster abundance is an extremely sensitive probe of the density fluctuation power spectrum and of the density parameter, $\Omega$. We develop this theme by deriving and studying in…