86 research outputs found
The Moderate Cooling Flow Model and Feedback in Galaxy Formation
For the recent four years we have been studying feedback heating in cooling
flow (CF) clusters by AGN activity that inflate bubbles by jets; this short
contribution to a meeting summarizes our main results. To achieve our results
we had to self-consistently inflate the bubbles with jets, rather than inject
them artificially. Our main results are as follows
(1) Feedback mechanisms that are based on Bondi accretion fail. Instead, the
accretion to the central super-massive black hole (SMBH) is in the form of cold
dense blobs that fall-in from an extended region. (2) Slow massive wide (SMW)
jets, or rapidly precessing jets, can inflate bubbles similar to those observed
in CF clusters. (3) Contrary to some claims in the literature, the inflated
bubbles are stable for a relatively long time, becoming unstable only at later
times. (4) A single bubble inflation episode excites multiple sound waves and
shocks. These can then heat the intracluster medium (ICM). (5) Mixing of the
bubble material to the ICM is efficient, and can serve as a main heating
channel. (6) The heating processes work in all directions, and can explain the
heating of the ICM in CF in clusters and in galaxies.Comment: To appear in proceedings of "The Monster's Fiery Breath", Eds.
Sebastian Heinz & Eric Wilcots (AIP conference series
Feedback Heating with Slow Jets in Cooling Flow Clusters
We propose a scenario in which a large fraction, or even most, of the gas
cooling to low temperatures of T<10^4 K in cooling flow clusters, directly
gains energy from the central black hole. Most of the cool gas is accelerated
to non-relativistic high velocities, v ~ 10^3-10^4 km/sec, after flowing
through, or close to, an accretion disk around the central black hole. A poorly
collimated wind (or double not-well collimated opposite jets) is formed.
According to the proposed scenario, this gas inflates some of the X-ray
deficient bubbles, such that the average gas temperature inside these bubbles
(cavities) in cooling flow clusters is kT_b ~< 100 keV. A large fraction of
these bubbles will be very faint, or not detectable, in the radio. The bright
rims of these weak smaller bubbles will appear as ripples. We suggest that the
X-ray ripples observed in the Perseus cluster, for example, are not sound
waves, but rather the rims of radio-faint weak bubbles which are only slightly
hotter than their environment. This scenario is incorporated into the moderate
cooling flow model; although not a necessary ingredient in that model, it
brings it to better agreement with observations. In the moderate cooling flow
model a cooling flow does exist, but the mass cooling rate is ~<10% of that in
old versions of cooling flow models.Comment: The Astrophysical Journal, in pres
Spin and magnetism in old neutron stars
The thermal, spin and magnetic evolution of neutron stars in the old low mass
binaries is first explored. Recycled to very short periods via accretion
torques, the neutron stars lose their magnetism progressively. If accretion
proceeds undisturbed for 100 Myrs these stars can rotate close to break up with
periods far below the minimum observed of 1.558 ms. We investigate their
histories using population synthesis models to show that a tail should exist in
the period distribution below 1.558 ms. The search of these ultrafastly
spinning neutron stars as pulsars can help discriminating among the various
equations of state for nuclear matter, and can shed light into the physics of
binary evolution.
The evolution of isolated neutron stars in the Galaxy is explored beyond the
pulsar phase. Moving through the tenuous interstellar medium, these old
solitary neutron stars lose their rotational energy. Whether also their
magnetism fades is still a mystery. A population synthesis model has revealed
that only a tiny fraction of them is able to accrete from the interstellar
medium, shining in the X-rays. There is the hope that these solitary stars will
eventually appear as faint sources in the Chandra sky survey. This might give
insight on the long term evolution of the magnetic field in isolated objects.Comment: 28 pages, 11 PostScript figures. To be published in "Physics of
Neutron Star Interiors" (Lecture Notes in Physics), ed. D. Blaschke, N.K.
Glendenning and A. Sedrakian (Springer, 2001
The population of ULXs in the spiral galaxy NGC 2276
We present results for X-ray point sources in the Sc galaxy NGC 2276,
obtained by analyzing Chandra data. The galaxy is known to be very active in
many wavelengths, possibly due to gravitational interaction with the central
elliptical of the group, NGC 2300. However, previous XMM-Newton observations
resulted in the detection of only one bright ULX and extended hot gas emission.
We present here the X-ray population in NGC 2276 which comprises 17 sources. We
found that 6 of them are new ULX sources in this spiral galaxy resolved for the
first time by Chandra. We constructed the Luminosity Function that can be
interpreted as mainly due of High Mass X-ray binaries, and estimate the Star
Formation rate (SFR) to be SFR ~ 5-10 M_sun/yr.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Proceedings of the meeting 'Ultra-Luminous X-ray
sources and Middle Weight Black Holes', ESAC, Madrid, Spain, May 201
SMAUG: a new technique for the deprojection of galaxy clusters
This paper presents a new technique for reconstructing the spatial
distributions of hydrogen, temperature and metal abundance of a galaxy cluster.
These quantities are worked out from the X-ray spectrum, modeled starting from
few analytical functions describing their spatial distributions. These
functions depend upon some parameters, determined by fitting the model to the
observed spectrum. We have implemented this technique as a new model in the
XSPEC software analysis package. We describe the details of the method, and
apply it to work out the structure of the cluster A1795. We combine the
observation of three satellites, exploiting the high spatial resolution of
Chandra for the cluster core, the wide collecting area of XMM-Newton for the
intermediate regions and the large field of view of Beppo-SAX for the outer
regions. We also test the validity and precision of our method by i) comparing
its results with those from a geometrical deprojection, ii) examining the
spectral residuals at different radii of the cluster and iii) reprojecting the
unfolded profiles and comparing them directly to the measured quantities. Our
analytical method yields the parameters defining the spatial functions directly
from the spectra. Their explicit knowledge allows a straightforward derivation
of other indirect physical quantities like the gravitating mass, as well as a
fast and easy estimate of the profiles uncertainties.Comment: 24 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables; emulateapj; accepted for publication
in the Astrophysical Journa
Inflating Fat Bubbles in Clusters of Galaxies by Wide Jets
We conduct two-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of jets expanding in
the intra-cluster medium (ICM). We find that for a fat, i.e. more or less
spherical, bubble attached to the center to be formed the jet should have high
momentum flux and a large opening angle. Typically, the half opening angle
should be >50 degrees, and the large momentum flux requires a jet speed of
\~10,000 km/sec. The inflation process involves vortices and local
instabilities which mix some ICM with the hot bubble. These results predict
that most of the gas inside the bubble has a temperature of 3x10^8<T<3x10^9 K,
and that large quantities of the cooling gas in cooling flow clusters are
expelled back to the intra-cluster medium, and heated up. The magnetic fields
and relativistic electrons that produce the synchrotron radio emission might be
formed in the shock wave of the jet.Comment: Submitted to ApJ Letter
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