Cooling+Heating Flows in Galaxy clusters: Turbulent heating, spectral modelling, and cooling efficiency

Abstract

The discrepancy between expected and observed cooling rates of X-ray emitting gas has led to the {\it cooling flow problem} at the cores of clusters of galaxies. A variety of models have been proposed to model the observed X-ray spectra and resolve the cooling flow problem, which involves heating the cold gas through different mechanisms. As a result, realistic models of X-ray spectra of galaxy clusters need to involve both heating {\it and} cooling mechanisms. In this paper, we argue that the heating time-scale is set by the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulent viscous heating for the Intracluster plasma, parametrised by the Shakura-Sunyaev viscosity parameter, $\alpha$. Using a cooling+heating flow model, we show that a value of $\alpha \simeq 0.05$ (with 10\% scatter) provides improved fits to the X-ray spectra of cooling flow, while at the same time, predicting reasonable cooling efficiency, ${\epsilon }_{cool}=0.33_{-0.15}^{+0.63}$. Our inferred values for $\alpha$ based on X-ray spectra are also in line with direct measurements of turbulent pressure in simulations and observations of galaxy clusters. This simple picture unifies astrophysical accretion, as a balance of MHD turbulent heating and cooling, across more than 16 orders of magnitudes in scale, from neutron stars to galaxy clusters.

Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

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• Heating Hot Atmospheres with Active Galactic Nuclei
• Intracluster Medium Entropy Profiles for a Chandra Archival Sample of Galaxy Clusters
• The Quiescent Intracluster Medium in the Core of the Perseus Cluster
• Turbulent Heating in Galaxy Clusters Brightest in X-rays
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Cited by in corpus (1)

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