Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2005-03-12
Astrophys.J. 631 (2005) 773-784
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
13 pages, 20 figures. Submitted to ApJ. Version with postscript figures embedded in the text available at http://www.umich.e
Scientific paper
10.1086/432608
We explore the detectability of bulk motions in the X-ray emitting intracluster medium (ICM) using a catalog of 1,836 mock Astro-E2 observations of simulated clusters of galaxies. We generate high resolution mock spectra for two observing strategies: a four-pointing mosaic and a single central pointing. Normalizing to 200 (400) photons in the iron K-alpha region for the mosaic (central) study, we fit Poisson realizations of each simulated spectrum to a velocity broadened isothermal plasma emission model. We confirm that the velocity characteristics (mean and dispersion) returned by the spectral fittings are unbiased measures of the emission-weighted values within the observed region, with scatter 55 km/s. The maximum velocity difference between mosaic element pairs $\Delta v_{\rm max}$ has ~ 6% likelihood of being transonic ($\Delta v_{\rm max} \ge 0.5 c_s$), and the likelihood falls steeply, $p \spropto (\Delta v_{\rm max}/c_s)^{-4}$, at high Mach number. The velocity broadening parameter $\sigma_v$ from the central pointing fit exceeds the thermal value in 49% of the cases, with again a $\sigma_v^{-4}$ tail at large dispersion. We present as case studies the clusters that yield the strongest signal for each observing strategy.
Dupke Renato A.
Evrard August E.
Pawl Andrew
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