Populations of Magnetized Filaments in the Intracluster Medium and the Galactic Center

Abstract

Magnetized radio filaments are found in abundance in the inner few hundred pc of our Galaxy. Progress in understanding this population of filaments has been slow, in part due to a lack of detection elsewhere in the Galaxy or in external galaxies. Recent highly sensitive radio continuum observations of radio galaxies in galaxy clusters have revealed remarkable isolated filamentary structures in the ICM that are linked to radio jets, tails and lobes. The origin of this class of filaments is not understood either. Here, we argue that the underlying physical mechanisms responsible for the creation of the two populations are the same because of their similarity in morphology, spacing between the filaments, aspect ratio, magnetic energy densities to thermal pressure of the medium, and that both populations have undergone synchrotron aging. These similarities provide an opportunity to investigate the physical processes in the ISM and ICM for the first time. We consider that the origin of the filaments in both the GC and ICM is a result of the interaction of a large-scale wind with clouds, or the filaments arise through the stretching and collection of field lines by turbulence in weakly magnetized medium. We examine these ideas toward four radio galaxy filaments associated with four radio galaxies IC 40B, IC 4496, J1333-3141, ESO137-006 and argue that much can be understood in the future by comparing these two populations of filaments.

14 pages, 4 figures, ApJL (in press)

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• MeerKAT view of the Dancing Ghosts -- Peculiar Galaxy Pair PKS 2130-538 in Abell 3785
• The Population of the Galactic Center Filaments: Position Angle Distribution Reveal a Degree-scale Collimated Outflow from Sgr A* along the Galactic Plane
• Non-thermal filaments and AGN recurrent activity in the galaxy group Nest200047: a LOFAR, uGMRT, MeerKAT, VLA radio spectral analysis
• New filamentary remnant radio emission and duty cycle constraints in the radio galaxy NGC 6086
• The JWST-NIRCam View of Sagittarius C. II. Evidence for Magnetically Dominated HII Regions in the CMZ
• A 600 kpc complex radio source at the center of Abell 3718 discovered by the EMU and POSSUM surveys
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• The SARAO MeerKAT Galactic Plane Survey filamentary source catalogue
• Resurging from the ashes: A spectral study of seven candidate revived radio fossils in nearby low-mass galaxy clusters