Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Sep 1997
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1997a%26a...325...74d&link_type=abstract
Astronomy and Astrophysics, v.325, p.74-80
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
3
Methods: Data Analysis, Galaxies: Clusters Of, Intergalactic Medium, Radio Continuum: Galaxies
Scientific paper
Diffuse radio halos of clusters of galaxies are generally classified as "steep-spectrum radio sources" according to the observed spectral index of the integrated flux density of α_S_>0.75. It is shown that the spectral index of the underlying synchrotron emission coefficient can be considerably smaller than α_S_ due to a frequency-dependent effective emission volume observed in some radio halos. Deiss, Reich, Lesch & Wielebinski (1997A&A...321...55D) have suggested an analytic deprojection method to derive the spatial distribution of the emissivity index from the observed spectral-index distribution of the surface brightness assuming a spherically symmetric gaussian radio halo source. The formalism also allows to check on the consistency of the observational data at different frequencies. The method is generalized to the case of any halo model that is symmetric about the center but otherwise arbitrary. It is shown that, as an example, in the central region of the extended radio halo of the Coma cluster, the spectral index of the emission coefficient may be as low as 0.43, which is smaller than the observed integrated-flux density index by about 0.8. Differences of this magnitude are significant, since α is an important discriminator of cosmic-ray acceleration models in the intracluster medium.
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