ON THE CONNECTION BETWEEN GIANT RADIO HALOS AND CLUSTER MERGERS

By R. Cassano, S. Ettori, S. Giacintucci, Gianfranco Brunetti, M. Markevitch, T. Venturi, M. Gitti. 2010

205 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The frequently observed association between giant radio halos (RHs) and merging galaxy clusters has driven present theoretical models of non-thermal emission from galaxy clusters, which are based on the idea that the energy dissipated during cluster–cluster mergers could power the formation of RHs. To quantitatively test the merger–halo connection, we present the first statistical study based on deep radio data and X-ray observations of a complete X-ray-selected sample of galaxy clusters with X-ray luminosity ⩾5 × 1044 erg s−1 and redshift 0.2 ⩽ z ⩽ 0.32. Using several methods to characterize cluster substructures, namely, the power ratios, centroid shift, and X-ray brightness concentration parameter, we show that clusters with and without RH can be quantitatively differentiated in terms of their dynamical properties. In particular, we confirm that RHs are associated with dynamically disturbed clusters and clusters without RH are more “relaxed,” with only a couple of exceptions where a disturbed cluster does not exhibit a halo.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f04e2992959d447ae763ea1891951f3fae0290ff

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Citations in the corpus

Diffuse Radio Emission from Galaxy Clusters (2019, methodology): “These samples should also contain a population of ultra-steep spectrum radio halos that are predicted in the framework of the turbulent re-acceleration model (Cassano et al. 2010a).”
X-ray–optical classification of cluster mergers and the evolution of the cluster merger fraction (2011, background): “…mergers still holds great promise for, for example, statistical studies of the properties of gas and galaxies in cluster mergers, as well as for investigations of the origin of diffuse, non-thermal radio emission which is indeed ubiquitous among the mergers selected here (Cassano et al. 2010).”
Massive and refined - II. The statistical properties of turbulent motions in massive galaxy clusters with high spatial resolution (2010, background): “…extensive radio follow ups of complete samples of galaxy clusters indicate that a ∼ 1 / 3 of massive L X > 5 10 44 erg / s ( M > 10 15 M ⊙ ) objects host Mpc-scale halos (e.g. Venturi et al.2007; 08; Cassano et al.2008) and that all radio halo clusters are merging systems (e.g. Cassano et al.2010).”
Lensing and x-ray mass estimates of clusters (simulations) (2012, methodology): “We recognize the region with regular systems by slightly relaxing the criteria adopted by Cassano et al. (2010).”
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).”
EMU: Evolutionary Map of the Universe (2011, background): “Brunetti et al. (2009), Cassano et al. (2010), Schuecker et al. (2001) have suggested that radio haloes in the centres of clusters are distributed bimodally, with haloes generally found only in those clusters which have recently undergone a merger, resulting in a disturbed appearance at X-ray…”