Thermal diffusion in the IGM of clusters of galaxies

Abstract

We revisit the phenomenon of elements diffusion in the intergalactic medium (IGM) in clusters of galaxies. The diffusion is driven by gravity, concentration and temperature gradients. The latter cause thermal diffusion, which has been so far ignored in IGM studies. We consider the full problem based on the Burgers' equations and demonstrate that the temperature gradients present in clusters of galaxies may successfully compete with gravity, evacuating metals from cooler regions. Under the combined action of gravity and temperature gradients, complicated metallicity profiles with several peaks and depressions may be formed. For a typical cool core cluster, the thermal diffusion may significantly reduce and even reverse the gravitational sedimentation of metals, resulting in the depression in their abundance in the core. This may have implications for diagnostics of the low temperature plasma in the centers of clusters of galaxies.

10 pages, 8 figures; accepted to MNRAS

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• The Mixing and Transport Properties of the Intra Cluster Medium: a numerical study using tracers particles
• The Stability of Weakly Collisional Plasmas with Thermal and Composition Gradients
• The Effect of Helium Sedimentation on Galaxy Cluster Masses and Scaling Relations
• Detection of optical coronal emission from 10^6 K gas in the core of the Centaurus cluster
• Plasma Instabilities in the Context of Current Helium Sedimentation Models: Dynamical Implications for the ICM in Galaxy Clusters
• On Helium Mixing in Quasi-global Simulations of the Intracluster Medium
• Impact of thermal diffusion and other abundance anomalies on cosmological uses of galaxy clusters
• Local Simulations of Instabilities Driven by Composition Gradients in the ICM
• Stability Analysis of Convection in the Intracluster Medium
• Helium diffusion during formation of the first galaxies
• Diffusion of Elements in the Interstellar Medium in Early-Type Galaxies
• On the Helium fingers in the intracluster medium
• Merger-Driven Turbulence and Coherent Transport in the Intracluster Medium