697 research outputs found
On the equipartition of thermal and non-thermal energy in clusters of galaxies
Clusters of galaxies are revealing themselves as powerful sources of non
thermal radiation in a wide range of wavelengths. In order to account for these
multifrequency observations equipartition of cosmic rays (CRs) with the thermal
gas in clusters of galaxies is often invoked. This condition might suggest a
dynamical role played by cosmic rays in the virialization of these large scale
structures and is now testable through gamma ray observations. We show here, in
the specific case of the Coma and Virgo clusters, for which upper limits on the
gamma ray emission exist, that equipartition implies gamma ray fluxes that are
close or even in excess of the EGRET limit, depending on the adopted model of
CR injection. We use this bound to limit the validity of the equipartition
condition. We also show that, contrary to what claimed in previous
calculations, the equipartition assumption implies gamma ray fluxes in the TeV
range which can be detectable even by currently operating gamma ray
observatories if the injection cosmic ray spectrum is flatter than .Comment: 20 pages + 2 figures. To appear in the Astrophysical Journa
On The Non Thermal Emission and Acceleration of Electrons in Coma and Other Clusters of Galaxies
Some clusters of galaxies in addition to thermal bremsstrahlung (TB), emit
diffuse radiation from the intercluster medium (ICM) at radio, EUV and hard
x-ray (HXR) ranges. The radio radiation is due to synchrotron by relativistic
electrons, and the inverse Compton (IC) scattering by the cosmic microwave
background radiation of the same electrons is the most natural source for the
HXR and perhaps the EUV emissions. However, simple estimates give a weaker
magnetic field than that suggested by Faraday rotation measurements.
Consequently, non-thermal bremsstrahlung (NTB) and TB have also been suggested
as sources of these emissions. We show that NTB cannot be the source of the
HXRs and that the difficulty with the low magnetic field in the IC model is
alleviated if we take into account the effects of observational bias,
nonisotropic pitch angle distribution and spectral breaks. We derive a spectrum
for the radiating electrons and discuss acceleration scenarios. We show that
continuous and in situ acceleration in the ICM of the background thermal
electrons requires unreasonably high energy input and acceleration of injected
relativistic electrons gives rise to a much flatter spectrum than desired,
unless a large fraction of electrons escape the ICM, in which case one obtains
EUV and HXR emissions extending well beyond the boundaries of the cluster. A
continuous emission by a cooling spectrum resulting from interaction with ICM
of electrons accelerated elsewhere also suffers from similar shortcomings. The
most likely scenario appears to be an episodic injection-acceleration model,
whereby one obtains a time dependent spectrum that for certain phases of its
evolution satisfies all the requirements.Comment: 27 pages, one Table, Four Figures. Latex AAS v5.0. Accepted by Ap
Magnetic Field Seeding by Galactic Winds
The origin of intergalactic magnetic fields is still a mystery and several
scenarios have been proposed so far: among them, primordial phase transitions,
structure formation shocks and galactic outflows. In this work we investigate
how efficiently galactic winds can provide an intense and widespread "seed"
magnetisation. This may be used to explain the magnetic fields observed today
in clusters of galaxies and in the intergalactic medium (IGM). We use
semi-analytic simulations of magnetised galactic winds coupled to high
resolution N-body simulations of structure formation to estimate lower and
upper limits for the fraction of the IGM which can be magnetised up to a
specified level. We find that galactic winds are able to seed a substantial
fraction of the cosmic volume with magnetic fields. Most regions affected by
winds have magnetic fields in the range -12 < Log B < -8 G, while higher seed
fields can be obtained only rarely and in close proximity to wind-blowing
galaxies. These seed fields are sufficiently intense for a moderately efficient
turbulent dynamo to amplify them to the observed values. The volume filling
factor of the magnetised regions strongly depends on the efficiency of winds to
load mass from the ambient medium. However, winds never completely fill the
whole Universe and pristine gas can be found in cosmic voids and regions
unaffected by feedback even at z=0. This means that, in principle, there might
be the possibility to probe the existence of primordial magnetic fields in such
regions.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publications by MNRAS. A high
resolution version of the paper is available at
http://astronomy.sussex.ac.uk/~sb207/Papers/bb.ps.g
Spin States in Graphene Quantum Dots
We investigate ground and excited state transport through small (d = 70 nm)
graphene quantum dots. The successive spin filling of orbital states is
detected by measuring the ground state energy as a function of a magnetic
field. For a magnetic field in-plane of the quantum dot the Zemann splitting of
spin states is measured. The results are compatible with a g-factor of 2 and we
detect a spin-filling sequence for a series of states which is reasonable given
the strength of exchange interaction effects expected for graphene
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