High-Resolution X-Ray Spectroscopic Constraints on Cooling-Flow Models for Clusters of Galaxies

By J. R. Peterson, S. Kahn, F. Paerels, J. Kaastra, T. Tamura, J. Bleeker, C. Ferrigno, J. Jernigan. 2002

451 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present high-resolution X-ray spectra of 14 putative cooling-flow clusters of galaxies obtained with the Reflection Grating Spectrometer on XMM-Newton. The clusters in the sample span a large range of temperatures and mass deposition rates. Various of these spectra exhibit line emission from O VIII, Ne X, Mg XII and XI, Al XIII and XII, Si XIV and XIII, N VII, and C VI as well as all Fe L ions. The spectra exhibit strong emission from cool plasma at just below the ambient temperature, T0, down to T0/2, but also exhibit a severe deficit of emission relative to the predictions of the isobaric cooling-flow model at lower temperatures (<T0/3). In addition, the best-resolved spectra show emission throughout the entire X-ray temperature range, but increasingly less emission at lower temperatures than the cooling-flow model would predict. These results are difficult to reconcile with simple prescriptions for distorting the emission measure distribution, e.g., by including additional heating or rapid cooling terms. We enumerate some theoretical difficulties in understanding the soft X-ray spectra of cooling flows independent of the classic problem of the failure to detect the cooling-flow sink. Empirically, the differential luminosity distribution is consistent with being proportional to the temperature to the power of ≈1-2, instead of being independent of the temperature, as expected in the standard multiphase model. The primary differences in the observed low-temperature spectra are ascribed to differences in the ambient temperature.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a2bf68ede32fcee37c309ee6883b20acb1696bcf

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Citations in the corpus

EMU: Evolutionary Map of the Universe (2011, background): “The lack of such obvious observational signatures (e.g. Peterson et al. 2001, 2003) implies that some central source of heating must be present.”
Cold molecular gas in the Perseus cluster core - Association with X-ray cavity, Halpha filaments and cooling flow - (2006, background): “…hot X-ray gas, pervading the cluster, cools and condenses toward the centre of many galaxy clusters, but this new generation of satellites have also pointed out the complex morphology of the intracluster medium and suggested that the necessity of some re-heating mechanisms (Peterson et al. 2003).”
How do galaxies get their gas (2002, background): “In the local Universe, at least, it appears that hot accretion is suppressed in groups and clusters, where X-ray emissivities imply short cooling times but X-ray spectra show that the predicted gas at T 1 keV is not present (Peterson et al. 2003).”
Breaking the hierarchy of galaxy formation (2005, background): “The second is the apparent absence of cooling flows at the centres of rich clusters where the cooling times are sufficiently short that large amounts of gas ought to be cooling but very little is observed to do so (Tamura et al. 2001; Peterson et al. 2003).”
A semi-analytic model for the co-evolution of galaxies, black holes and active galactic nuclei (2008, background): “Moreover, X-ray spectroscopy shows that very little gas is cooling below a temperature of about one-third of the virial temperature of the cluster (Peterson et al. 2003).”
Mechanical AGN feedback: controlling the thermodynamical evolution of elliptical galaxies (2012, background): “…rates at least one order of magnitude lower than simple expectations, in both galaxies and clusters/groups – this is the so-called cooling-flow problem (Bregman, Miller & Irwin 2001; Oegerle & Hill 2001; Peterson et al. 2001, 2003; Xu et al. 2002; Tamura et al. 2003; Bregman et al. 2005, 2006).”
AGN heating and ICM cooling in the HIFLUGCS sample of galaxy clusters (2008, background): “…R. Mittal et al.: AGN heating in the HIFLUGCS sample of galaxy clusters cores (e.g. Tamura et al. 2001; Peterson et al. 2001; Kaastra et al. 2001; Peterson et al. 2003; Xu et al. 2002; Sakelliou et al. 2002; Sanders et al. 2008), and; (2) even though the cooling of the ICM is manifested in the…”
Thermal instability and the feedback regulation of hot haloes in clusters, groups and galaxies (2011, background): “Moreover, the shape of dL/dLog10T vs. temperature below the peak temperature is quite similar, and is consistent with the observational fact that there is negligible luminosity below 1/2 − 1/3 of the ambient cluster temperature (e.g., Peterson et al. 2003; Sanders et al. 2010).”
What is a cool-core cluster? a detailed analysis of the cores of the X-ray flux-limited HIFLUGCS cluster sample (2009, methodology): “7 in Peterson et al. (2003).”
On the Nature of Feedback Heating in Cooling Flow Clusters (2004, background): “The observations of Galaxy Clusters with the last generation X-ray satellites Chandra and XMM-Newton have shown the remarkable lack of the large amount of cool gas predicted by the standard cooling flow (CF) theory (e.g. Peterson et al. 2003; Molendi & Pizzolato 2001).”
Cluster Heating by Viscous Dissipation of Sound Waves (2003, background): “For example, AGN heating may explain why the gas temperature, while declining towards cluster centers, does not drop below about 1 keV (Peterson et al. 2001, 2003; Tamura et al. 2001).”
X-ray spectroscopy of galaxy clusters: studying astrophysical processes in the largest celestial laboratories (2009, methodology): “…with theXMM-Newton RGS instrument, have now also been used to characterize the multi-temperature structure in cool cores in more detail in terms of the emission measure (or luminosity) distribution of the plasma as a function of temperature (e.g. Peterson et al. 2003; Kaastra et al. 2004).”
Energy, momentum and mass outflows and feedback from thick accretion discs around rotating black holes (2013, background): “…much shorter than the age of the system, suggesting that gas at the centres of these clusters must condense and turn into stars; however, there is no observational evidence for star formation at the required level (Fabian et al. 2001; Peterson et al. 2003; Kaastra et al. 2004; Croton et al. 2006).”
A deeper X‐ray study of the core of the Perseus galaxy cluster: the power of sound waves and the distribution of metals and cosmic rays (2007, background): “There is less apparent cooling as the minimum temperature decreases (as with the results of Peterson et al. 2003), until below ∼ 0.8 keV where the results are approximately consistent.”
A deep Chandra observation of the Perseus cluster: shocks and ripples (2003, methodology): “As has been found for many clusters with Chandra and XMM–Newton data (Peterson et al. 2001, 2003; Tamura et al. 2001), there is little gas at lower temperatures.”
The Coevolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe (2014, background): “In reality, however, observations show that the gas temperatures in the cluster cores are at most a factor 3 below the value at large radii, and the amount of cooling gas is only about 10% of the cooling flow prediction (e.g. Peterson et al. 2001, 2003, David et al. 2001, Tamura et al. 2001).”
The Search for the Missing Baryons at Low Redshift (2007, background): “In support of soft emission from Coma, there are weak Ne IX and OVIII absorption lines at 2.3σ and 1.9σ, obtained with the RGS on XMM-Newton (Takei et al., 2007).”
Hydrodynamical simulations of cluster formation with central AGN heating (2005, background): “Journal compilation C© 2005 RASDownloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mnras/ rticle-abstract/366/2/397/1213232 by guest on 29 July 2018 Peterson et al. 2001, 2003; Edge 2001; Edge et al. 2002; Edge & Frayer 2003; Böhringer et al. 2002; Salomé & Combes 2004).”