Shaken Snow Globes: Kinematic Tracers of the Multiphase Condensation Cascade in Massive Galaxies, Groups, and Clusters [GA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1709.06564


We propose a novel method to constrain turbulence and bulk motions in massive galaxies, groups and clusters, exploring both simulations and observations. As emerged in the recent picture of the top-down multiphase condensation, the hot gaseous halos are tightly linked to all other phases in terms of cospatiality and thermodynamics. While hot halos (10^7 K) are perturbed by subsonic turbulence, warm (10^4 K) ionized and neutral filaments condense out of the turbulent eddies. The peaks condense into cold molecular clouds (< 100 K) raining in the core via chaotic cold accretion (CCA). We show all phases are tightly linked via the ensemble (wide-aperture) velocity dispersion along the line of sight. The correlation arises in complementary long-term AGN feedback simulations and high-resolution CCA runs, and is corroborated by the combined Hitomi and new IFU measurements in Perseus cluster. The ensemble multiphase gas distributions are characterized by substantial spectral line broadening (100-200 km/s) with mild line shift. On the other hand, pencil-beam detections sample the small-scale clouds displaying smaller broadening and significant line shift up to several 100 km/s, with increased scatter due to turbulence intermittency. We present new ensemble sigma_v of the warm Halpha+[NII] gas in 72 observed cluster/group cores: the constraints are consistent with the simulations and can be used as robust proxies for the turbulent velocities, in particular for the hot plasma (otherwise requiring extremely long X-ray exposures). We show the physically motivated criterion C = t_cool/_teddy ~ 1 best traces the condensation extent region and presence of multiphase gas in observed clusters/groups. The ensemble method can be applied to many available datasets and has the potential to substantially advance our understanding of multiphase halos in light of the next-generation multiwavelength missions.

Read this paper on arXiv…

M. Gaspari, M. McDonald, S. Hamer, et. al.
Thu, 21 Sep 17
2/50

Comments: 15 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables; feedback welcome