Simulations of gas sloshing in galaxy cluster Abell 2052

Abstract

The intracluster plasma of Abell 2052 exhibits in X-rays a spiral structure extending more than 250 kpc, which is comprised of cool gas. This feature is understood to be the result of gas sloshing caused by the off-axis collision with a smaller subcluster. We aim to recover the dynamical history of Abell 2052 and to reproduce the broad morphology of the spiral feature. To this end, we perform hydrodynamical $N$-body simulations of cluster collisions. We obtain two regimes that adequately reproduce the desired features. The first scenario is a close encounter and a recent event (0.8 Gyr since pericentric passage), while the second scenario has a larger impact parameter and is older (almost 2.6 Gyr since pericentric passage). In the second case, the simulation predicts that the perturbing subcluster should be located approximately 2 Mpc from the centre of the major cluster. At that position, we are able to identify an observed optical counterpart at the same redshift: a galaxy group with $M_{500}=(1.16\pm 0.43)\times 10^{13}{M}_{\odot }$.

10 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (5)

• Shocks and cold fronts in galaxy clusters
• The origin of cold fronts in the cores of relaxed galaxy clusters
• Star formation efficiency in galaxy clusters
• Gas Sloshing and Bubbles in the Galaxy Group NGC 5098
• Cold fronts and multi-temperature structures in the core of Abell 2052

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