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Title:
The impact of mergers on relaxed X-ray clusters - I. Dynamical evolution and emergent transient structures
Authors:
Poole, Gregory B.; Fardal, Mark A.; Babul, Arif; McCarthy, Ian G.; Quinn, Thomas; Wadsley, James
Affiliation:
AA(Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Victoria, Elliott Building, 3800 Finnerty Road, Victoria, BC V8P 1A1, Canada), AB(Department of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA), AC(Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Victoria, Elliott Building, 3800 Finnerty Road, Victoria, BC V8P 1A1, Canada), AD(Department of Physics, University of Durham, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE), AE(Department of Astronomy, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA), AF(Department of Physics & Astronomy, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L88 4M1, Canada)
Publication:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 373, Issue 3, pp. 881-905. (MNRAS Homepage)
Publication Date:
12/2006
Origin:
MNRAS
MNRAS Keywords:
galaxies: clusters: general , intergalactic medium , cosmology: theory , X-rays: general
Abstract Copyright:
(c) 2006 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2006 RAS
DOI:
10.1111/j.1365-2966.2006.10916.x
Bibliographic Code:
2006MNRAS.373..881P

Abstract

We report on the analysis of a suite of smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations (incorporating cooling and star formation) of mergers involving idealized X-ray clusters whose initial conditions resemble relaxed clusters with cool compact cores observed by Chandra and XMM. The simulations sample the most-interesting, theoretically plausible, range of impact parameters and progenitor mass ratios. We find that all mergers evolve via a common progression. We illustrate this progression in the projected gas density, X-ray surface brightness, Sunyaev-Zel'dovich, temperature, and gas-entropy maps. Several different classes of transient `cold front' like features can arise over the course of a merger. Each class is distinguished by a distinct morphological signature and physical cause. We find that all these classes are present in Chandra and XMM observations of merging systems and propose a naming scheme for these features: `comet-like' tails, bridges, plumes, streams and edges. In none of the cases considered do the initial cool compact cores of the primary and the secondary get destroyed during the course of the mergers. Instead, the two remnant cores eventually combine to form a new core that, depending on the final mass of the remnant, can have a greater cooling efficiency than either of its progenitors. We quantify the evolving morphology of our mergers using centroid variance, power ratios and offset between the X-ray and the projected mass maps. We find that the centroid variance best captures the dynamical state of the cluster. It also provides an excellent indicator of how far the system is from virial and hydrostatic equilibrium. Placing the system at z = 0.1, we find that all easily identified observable traces of the secondary disappear from a simulated 50-ks Chandra image following the second pericentric passage. The system, however, takes an additional ~2Gyr to relax and virialize. Observationally, the only reliable indicator of a system in this state is the smoothness of its X-ray surface brightness isophotes, not temperature fluctuations. Temperature fluctuations at the level of ΔT/T ~ 20 per cent, can persist in the final systems well past the point of virialization, suggesting that the existence of temperature fluctuations, in and of themselves, does not necessarily indicate a disturbed or unrelaxed system.

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