Characterising the turbulent multiphase halos with periodic box simulations

Abstract

Turbulence in the intracluster medium (ICM) is driven by active galactic nuclei (AGNs) jets, by mergers, and in the wakes of infalling galaxies. It not only governs gas motion but also plays a key role in the ICM thermodynamics. Turbulence can help seed thermal instability by generating density fluctuations, and mix the hot and cold phases together to produce intermediate temperature gas ($10^4$--$10^7$ $\mathrm{K}$) with short cooling times. We conduct high resolution ($384^3$--$768^3$ resolution elements) idealised simulations of the multiphase ICM and study the effects of turbulence strength, characterised by $f_{\mathrm{turb}}$ ($0.001$--$1.0$), the ratio of turbulent forcing power to the net radiative cooling rate. We analyse density and temperature distribution, amplitude and nature of gas perturbations, and probability of transitions across the temperature phases. We also study the effects of mass and volume-weighted thermal heating and weak ICM magnetic fields. For low $f_{\mathrm{turb}}$, the gas is distribution is bimodal between the hot and cold phases. The mixing between different phases becomes more efficient with increasing $f_{\mathrm{turb}}$, producing larger amounts of the intermediate temperature gas. Strong turbulence ($f_{\mathrm{turb}}\ge 0.5$) generates larger density fluctuations and faster cooling, The rms logarithmic pressure fluctuation scaling with Mach number ${\sigma }_{\ln \bar{P}}^2\approx \ln (1+b^2{\gamma }^2{\mathcal{M}}^4)$ is unaffected by thermal instability and is the same as in hydro turbulence. In contrast, the density fluctuations characterised by ${\sigma }_s^2$ are much larger, especially for $\mathcal{M}\lesssim 0.5$. In magnetohydrodynamic runs, magnetic fields provide significant pressure support in the cold phase but do not have any strong effects on the diffuse gas distribution, and nature and amplitude of fluctuations.

17 pages, 13 figures, MNRAS accepted version. Simulation movies are in this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8QsytVrsws&list=PLuaNgQ1v_KMathKae1SF2nKuJWzL9DQTt

References in corpus (32)

• The Circumgalactic Medium
• The COS-Halos Survey: Physical Conditions and Baryonic Mass in the Low-Redshift Circumgalactic Medium
• The Quiescent Intracluster Medium in the Core of the Perseus Cluster
• Turbulent Heating in Galaxy Clusters Brightest in X-rays
• CMasher: Scientific colormaps for making accessible, informative and 'cmashing' plots
• A new Jeans resolution criterion for (M)HD simulations of self-gravitating gas: Application to magnetic field amplification by gravity-driven turbulence
• MHD simulations of the magnetorotational instability in a shearing box with zero net flux. I. The issue of convergence
• Resolving small-scale cold circumgalactic gas in TNG50
• A robust numerical scheme for highly compressible magnetohydrodynamics: Nonlinear stability, implementation and tests
• Magnetic support of the optical emission line filaments in NGC 1275
• Efficiency of gas cooling and accretion at the disc-corona interface
• The density structure and star formation rate of non-isothermal polytropic turbulence
• Probing the Fermi Bubbles in Ultraviolet Absorption: A Spectroscopic Signature of the Milky Way's Biconical Nuclear Outflow
• Constraining Gas Motions in the Intra-Cluster Medium
• Nuclear Outflow of the Milky Way: Studying the Kinematics and Spatial Extent of the Northern Fermi Bubble
• Direct Detection of Black Hole-Driven Turbulence in the Centers of Galaxy Clusters
• Suppressed effective viscosity in the bulk intergalactic plasma
• OVI Observations of Galaxy Clusters: Evidence for Modest Cooling Flows
• Energy transfer in compressible magnetohydrodynamic turbulence
• Suppression of electron thermal conduction by whistler turbulence in a sustained thermal gradient
• Turbulence and cooling in galaxy cluster cores
• Multiphase gas in the circumgalactic medium: relative role of $t_{\mathrm{cool}}/t_{\mathrm{ff}}$ and density fluctuations
• Cold gas in the Milky Way's nuclear wind
• Early Science from POSSUM: Shocks, turbulence, and a massive new reservoir of ionised gas in the Fornax cluster
• Velocity structure functions in multiphase turbulence: interpreting kinematics of H$\alpha$ filaments in cool core clusters
• Non-Kolmogorov turbulence in multiphase intracluster medium driven by cold gas precipitation and AGN jets
• Thermal Instabilities and Shattering in the High-Redshift WHIM: Convergence Criteria and Implications for Low-Metallicity Strong HI Absorbers
• A Graphical Interpretation of Circumgalactic Precipitation
• Cooling flows around cold clouds in the circumgalactic medium: steady-state models & comparison with TNG50
• A Massive, Clumpy Molecular Gas Distribution and Displaced AGN in Zw 3146
• The Size of the Cooling Region of Hot Gas in Two Elliptical Galaxies
• Resolving the formation of cold HI filaments in the high velocity cloud complex C

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Turbulent dynamo in the two-phase interstellar medium
• Velocity structure functions in multiphase turbulence: interpreting kinematics of H$\alpha$ filaments in cool core clusters
• Cooling driven coagulation
• AGN Feedback in Groups and Clusters of Galaxies
• The properties of magnetised cold filaments in a cool-core galaxy cluster
• Absorption-based Circumgalactic Medium Line Emission Estimates
• PITSZI: Probing Intra-cluster medium Turbulence with Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Imaging -- Application to the triple merging cluster MACS J0717.5+3745
• Misty, patchy, and turbulent: constraining the cool circumgalactic medium with mCC