Astrophysics
[Submitted on 19 Jun 2007 (v1), last revised 21 Feb 2008 (this version, v2)]
Title:Towards a Holistic View of the Heating and Cooling of the Intracluster Medium
View PDFAbstract: (Abridged) X-ray clusters are conventionally divided into two classes: "cool core" (CC) clusters and "non-cool core" (NCC) clusters. Yet relatively little attention has been given to the origins of this dichotomy and, in particular, to the energetics and thermal histories of the two classes. We develop a model for the entropy profiles of clusters starting from the configuration established by gravitational shock heating and radiative cooling. At large radii, gravitational heating accounts for the observed profiles and their scalings well. However, at small and intermediate radii, radiative cooling and gravitational heating cannot be combined to explain the observed profiles of either type of cluster. The inferred entropy profiles of NCC clusters require that material is preheated prior to cluster collapse in order to explain the absence of low entropy (cool) material in these systems. We show that a similar modification is also required in CC clusters in order to match their properties at intermediate radii. In CC clusters, this modification is unstable, and an additional process is required to prevent cooling below a temperature of a few keV. We show that this can be achieved by adding a self-consistent AGN feedback loop in which the lowest-entropy, most rapidly cooling material is heated so that it rises buoyantly to mix with material at larger radii. The resulting model does not require fine tuning and is in excellent agreement with a wide variety of observational data. Some of the other implications of this model are briefly discussed.
Submission history
From: Ian G. McCarthy [view email][v1] Tue, 19 Jun 2007 11:47:00 UTC (143 KB)
[v2] Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:39:34 UTC (152 KB)
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