Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2009-12-18
Astrophys.J.719:L74-L78,2010
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Revised version to appear in Astrophys.J.Lett
Scientific paper
Cold fronts (CFs) - density and temperature plasma discontinuities - are ubiquitous in cool cores of galaxy clusters, where they appear as X-ray brightness edges in the intracluster medium, nearly concentric with the cluster center. We analyze the thermodynamic profiles deprojected across core CFs found in the literature. While the pressure appears continuous across these CFs, we find that all of them require significant centripetal acceleration beneath the front. This is naturally explained by a tangential, nearly sonic bulk flow just below the CF, and a tangential shear flow involving a fair fraction of the plasma beneath the front. Such shear should generate near-equipartition magnetic fields on scales ~<50 pc from the front, and could magnetize the entire core. Such fields would explain the apparent stability of cool-core CFs and the recently reported CF-radio minihalo association.
Birnboim Yuval
Keshet Uri
Loeb Abraham
Markevitch Maxim
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