A systematic study of X-ray substructure of galaxy clusters detected in the ROSAT All-Sky Survey ?

By P. Schuecker, H. Böhringer, T. Reiprich, L. Feretti. 2001

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Results of a systematic study of substructure in X-ray surface brightness distributions of a combined sample of 470 REFLEX+BCS clusters of galaxies are presented. The fully automated morphology analysis is based on data of the 3rd processing of the ROSAT All-Sky survey (RASS-3). After correction for several systematic effects, $52\pm 7$ percent of the REFLEX+BCS clusters are found to be substructured in metric apertures of 1 Mpc radius ($H_0= 50 {\rm km} {\rm s}^{-1} {\rm Mpc}^{-1}$). Future simulations will show statistically which mass spectrum of major and minor mergers contributes to this number. Another important result is the discovery of a substructure-density relation, analogous to the morphology-density relation for galaxies. Here, clusters with asymmetric or multi-modal X-ray surface brightness distributions are located preferentially in regions with higher cluster number densities. The substructure analysis techniques are used to compare the X-ray morphology of 53 clusters with radio halos and relics, and 22 cooling flow clusters with the REFLEX+BCS reference sample. After careful equalization of the different "sensitivities" of the subsamples to substructure detection it is found that the halo and relic sample tends to show more often multi-modal and elongated X-ray surface brightness distributions compared to the REFLEX+BCS reference sample. The cooling flow clusters show more often circular symmetric and unimodal distributions compared to the REFLEX+BCS and the halo/relic reference samples. Both findings further support the idea that radio halos and relics are triggered by merger events, and that pre-existing cooling flows might be disrupted by recent major mergers.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6a4454d94f3c6429eab9ebb0824d3607cfb3b06a

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Citations in the corpus

The representative XMM-Newton cluster structure survey (REXCESS) of an X-ray luminosity selected galaxy cluster sample (2007, background): “…of cluster mergers and the frequency of cluster cooling cores as a function of cluster mass; both cosmologically very important diagnostics (e.g. Schuecker et al. 2001b); (v) entropy profiles of the clusters as probes of the thermal and star formation history in the clusters; (vi) metal…”
Diffuse Radio Emission from Galaxy Clusters (2019, background): “Early work already established evidence that radio halos were related to cluster merger events as determined from Xray observations (e.g., Feretti et al. 2000; Buote 2001; Schuecker et al. 2001, 2002; Feretti 2002; Giovannini & Feretti 2002; Böringer & Schuecker 2002).”
GMRT radio halo survey in galaxy clusters at z = 0.2–0.4 - II. The eBCS clusters and analysis of the complete sample (2008, background): “It is fairly well established that all clusters hosting halos and relics show signs of merging activity (e.g. Buote 2001; Schuecker et al. 2001), while a complete analysis of the dynamics of clusters without halos and relics is still missing.”
Cosmic ray transport in galaxy clusters: implications for radio halos, gamma-ray signatures, and cool core heating (2010, background): “11 Buote (2001); Schuecker et al. (2001); Markevitch & Vikhlinin (2001); Govoni et al. (2004); Venturi et al. (2008); Cassano et al. (2010). clusters, as the re-accelerated CRe could be injected by hadronic CRp-gas interactions (Brunetti & Blasi 2005).”
Turbulent gas motions in galaxy cluster simulations: the role of smoothed particle hydrodynamics viscosity (2005, background): “In addition, the occurrence of non–thermal phenomena is found to be related to the dynamical state and mass of the parent cluster (Giovannini et al. 1999; Buote 2001; Schuecker et al. 2001; Feretti 2002), which suggests a connection between cluster mergers and non–thermal activity.”
The ROSAT-ESO Flux Limited X-ray (REFLEX) Galaxy cluster survey. V. The cluster catalogue (2004, methodology): “…on the construction of the sample (Böhringer et al. 2001a, Paper I), the assessment of the large-scale structure (Collins et al. 2000, Paper II; Schuecker et al. 2001a, Paper III; Böhringer et al. 2002, Paper IV; Schuecker et al. 2002, 2003a (Papers VI and VII), 2003b; Kerscher et al. 2001),…”
ON THE CONNECTION BETWEEN GIANT RADIO HALOS AND CLUSTER MERGERS (2010, background): “…evidence in the literature that RHs are found in clusters with significant substructure in the X-ray images, as well as complex gas temperature distribution, which are signatures of cluster mergers (e.g., Schuecker et al. 2001; Govoni et a. 2004; Markevitch & Vikhlinin 2001; Venturi et al. 2008).”