Chandra Observation of 3C288 - Reheating the Cool Core of a 3 keV Cluster from a Nuclear Outburst at z = 0.246

Abstract

We present results from a 42 ks Chandra/ACIS-S observation of the transitional FRI/FRII radio galaxy 3C288 at z = 0.246. We detect $\sim$3 keV gas extending to a radius of $\sim$0.5 Mpc with a 0.5-2.0 keV luminosity of 6.6 $\times$ 10${}^{43}$ ergs s${}^{-1}$, implying that 3C288 lies at the center of a poor cluster. We find multiple surface brightness discontinuities in the gas indicative of either a shock driven by the inflation of the radio lobes or a recent merger event. The temperature across the discontinuities is roughly constant with no signature of a cool core, thus disfavoring either the merger cold-front or sloshing scenarios. We argue therefore that the discontinuities are shocks due to the supersonic inflation of the radio lobes. If they are shocks, the energy of the outburst is $\sim$10^{60} ergs, or roughly 30% of the thermal energy of the gas within the radius of the shock, assuming that the shocks are part of a front produced by a single outburst. The cooling time of the gas is $\sim$10^8 yrs, so that the energy deposited by the nuclear outburst could have reheated and efficiently disrupted a cool core.

14 pages and 6 figures (some figures are of lower quality). Accepted for publication in ApJ (tentatively scheduled for the October 10, 2010, v722-1 issue)

References in corpus (12)

• Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Three Year Results: Implications for Cosmology
• Heating Hot Atmospheres with Active Galactic Nuclei
• A Semi-Analytic Model for the Co-evolution of Galaxies, Black Holes, and Active Galactic Nuclei
• A unified model for AGN feedback in cosmological simulations of structure formation
• Shocks and cold fronts in galaxy clusters
• Hot and cold gas accretion and feedback in radio-loud active galaxies
• The origin of cold fronts in the cores of relaxed galaxy clusters
• An XMM-Newton study of the environments, particle content and impact of low-power radio galaxies
• A High Fidelity Sample of Cold Front Clusters from the Chandra Archive
• The Hot Gas Content of Low-Luminosity Early-Type Galaxies and the Implications Regarding Supernova Heating and AGN Feedback
• Core Gas Sloshing in Abell 1644
• The luminous X-ray hotspot in 4C 74.26: synchrotron or inverse-Compton emission?

Cited by in corpus (11)

• The Chandra Survey of Extragalactic Sources in the 3CR Catalog: X-ray Emission from Nuclei, Jets, and Hotspots in the Chandra Archival Observations
• A systematic search for X-ray cavities in galaxy clusters, groups, and elliptical galaxies
• A Chandra Snapshot Survey for 3C Radio Galaxies with redshifts between 0.3 and 0.5
• Radio morphology-accretion mode link in FRII low-excitation radio galaxies
• Radio AGN in galaxy clusters: heating hot atmospheres and driving supermassive black hole growth over cosmic time
• Gas Sloshing and Radio Galaxy Dynamics in the Core of the 3C449 Group
• On the Interaction of the PKS B1358-113 Radio Galaxy with the Abell 1836 Cluster
• Average Heating Rate of Hot Atmospheres in Distant Clusters by Radio AGN: Evidence for Continuous AGN Heating
• Clusters of galaxies and the cosmic web with SKA
• On the Merging Cluster Abell 578 and Its Central Radio Galaxy 4C +67.13
• From Nearby Low Luminosity AGN to High Redshift Radio Galaxies: Science Interests with SKA