The evolution of cosmic ray electrons in the cosmic web: seeding by AGN, star formation and shocks

Abstract

Several processes in the Universe convert a fraction of gas kinetic energy into the acceleration of relativistic electrons, making them observable at radio wavelengths, or contributing to a dormant reservoir of low-energy cosmic rays in cosmic structures. We present a new suite of cosmological simulations, with simple galaxy formation models calibrated to work at a specific spatial resolution, tailored to study all most important processes of injection of relativistic electrons in evolving large-sale structures: accretion and merger shocks, feedback from active galactic nuclei and winds from star forming regions. We also follow the injection of magnetic fields by active galactic nuclei and star formation, and compute the observational signatures of these mechanisms. We find that the injection of cosmic ray electrons by shocks is the most volume filling process, and that it also dominates the energy density of fossil relativistic electrons in halos. The combination of the seeding mechanisms studied in this work, regardless of the uncertainties related to physical or numerical uncertainties, is more than enough to fuel large-scale radio emissions with a large amount of seed fossil electrons. We derive an approximated formula to predict the number of fossil cosmic ray electrons injected by z=0 by the total activity of shocks, AGN and star formation in the volume of halos. By looking at the maximum possible contribution to the magnetisation of the cosmic web by all our simulated sources, we conclude that galaxy formation-related processes, alone, cannot explain the values of Faraday Rotation of background polarised sources recently detected using LOFAR.

31 pages, 30 figures, Astronomy & Astrophysics

References in corpus (64)

• Cosmic Star Formation History
• Simba: Cosmological Simulations with Black Hole Growth and Feedback
• Shocks and cold fronts in galaxy clusters
• Turbulence and Magnetic Fields in the Large Scale Structure of the Universe
• Detecting shock waves in cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations
• Simultaneous Acceleration of Protons and Electrons at Nonrelativistic Quasiparallel Collisionless Shocks
• Radio signature of cosmological structure formation shocks
• Simulations of AGN feedback in galaxy clusters and groups: impact on gas fractions and the Lx-T scaling relation
• The Case for Electron Re-Acceleration at Galaxy Cluster Shocks
• A radio ridge connecting two galaxy clusters in a filament of the cosmic web
• Non-Thermal Electron Acceleration in Low Mach Number Collisionless Shocks. I. Particle Energy Spectra and Acceleration Mechanism
• Calibration of the optical mass proxy for clusters of galaxies and an update of the WHL12 cluster catalog
• An XMM-Newton study of the environments, particle content and impact of low-power radio galaxies
• On the amplification of magnetic fields in cosmic filaments and galaxy clusters
• Cosmological Shock Waves in the Large Scale Structure of the Universe: Non-gravitational Effects
• Simulations of extragalactic magnetic fields and of their observables
• Non-Thermal Electron Acceleration in Low Mach Number Collisionless Shocks. II. Firehose-Mediated Fermi Acceleration and its Dependence on Pre-Shock Conditions
• The Turbulent Dynamo in Highly Compressible Supersonic Plasmas
• The Matryoshka Run (II): Time Dependent Turbulence Statistics, Stochastic Particle Acceleration and Microphysics Impact in a Massive Galaxy Cluster
• Electron Surfing and Drift Accelerations in a Weibel-dominated High-Mach-number Shock
• The Gamma-Ray Window to Intergalactic Magnetism
• Differences in Faraday Rotation Between Adjacent Extragalactic Radio Sources as a Probe of Cosmic Magnetic Fields
• Cosmological shock waves
• Testing cosmic-ray acceleration with radio relics: a high-resolution study using MHD and tracers
• Co-evolution of massive black holes and their host galaxies at high redshift: discrepancies from six cosmological simulations and the key role of JWST
• Accretion mode versus radio morphology in the LOFAR Deep Fields
• Simulating Gamma-ray Emission in Star-forming Galaxies
• Magnetic field strength in cosmic web filaments
• Cosmic rays and non-thermal emission in simulated galaxies: III. probing cosmic ray calorimetry with radio spectra and the FIR-radio correlation
• Galaxy clusters enveloped by vast volumes of relativistic electrons
• First Predicted Cosmic Ray Spectra, Primary-to-Secondary Ratios, and Ionization Rates from MHD Galaxy Formation Simulations
• Radio footprints of a minor merger in the Shapley Supercluster: From supercluster down to galactic scales
• A snapshot of the oldest AGN feedback phases
• Magnetic fields and relativistic electrons fill entire galaxy cluster
• Magnetic field evolution in cosmic filaments with LOFAR data
• Cosmic evolution of low-excitation radio galaxies in the LOFAR Two-meter Sky Survey Deep Fields
• Shocks and non-thermal particles in clusters of galaxies
• Electron Pre-Acceleration at Nonrelativistic High-Mach-Number Perpendicular Shocks
• Simulating the transport of relativistic electrons and magnetic fields injected by radio galaxies in the intracluster medium
• Recent Progress in Modeling the Macro- and Micro-Physics of Radio Jet Feedback in Galaxy Clusters
• Abell 1033: birth of a radio phoenix
• Constraints on primordial magnetic fields from magnetically-induced perturbations: current status and future perspectives with LiteBIRD and future ground based experiments
• Constraining the AGN duty cycle in the cool-core cluster MS 0735.6+7421 with LOFAR data
• Interactions Between Radio Galaxies and Cluster Shocks - 1: Jet Axes Aligned with Shock Normals
• The LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey: the radio view of the cosmic star formation history
• Kinetic simulations of nonrelativistic perpendicular shocks of young supernova remnants. I. Electron shock-surfing acceleration
• CRESCENDO: An on-the-fly Fokker-Planck Solver for Spectral Cosmic Rays in Cosmological Simulations
• Polarized accretion shocks from the cosmic web
• Shock waves in the magnetized cosmic web: the role of obliquity and cosmic-ray acceleration
• Theory of Electron Injection at Oblique Shock of Finite Thickness
• Life cycle of cosmic-ray electrons in the intracluster medium
• Nearby galaxies in the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey II. The magnetic field-gas relation
• Account of the baryonic feedback effect in gamma-ray measurements of intergalactic magnetic fields
• Non-linear diffusive shock acceleration: A recipe for injection of electrons
• FIGARO Simulation: FIlaments & GAlactic RadiO Simulation
• Cosmic-Ray Driven Galactic Winds from the Warm Interstellar Medium
• A formation mechanism for "Wrong Way" Radio Relics
• A search for inter-cluster filaments with LOFAR and eROSITA
• Wasserstein distance as a new tool for discriminating cosmologies through the topology of large scale structure
• A multishock scenario for the formation of radio relics
• On the alignment of haloes, filaments and magnetic fields in the simulated cosmic web
• Filamentary Baryons and Where to Find Them: A forecast of synchrotron radiation from merger and accretion shocks in the local Cosmic Web
• Topological data analysis reveals differences between simulated galaxies and dark matter haloes
• Cosmic accretion shocks as a tool to measure the dark matter mass of galaxy clusters

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Radio Observations as a Probe of Cosmic Web Magnetism
• Constraints on the intergalactic magnetic field from Fermi-LAT observations of GRB 221009A
• Simulated Rotation Measure Sky from Primordial Magnetic Fields
• Intergalactic magnetic field lower limits up to the redshift $z\approx 3$
• Cosmological simulation of a radio synchrotron bridge between pre-merging galaxy clusters
• Magnetic field spreading from stellar and galactic dynamos into the exterior