5,600 research outputs found
Shock heating of the merging galaxy cluster A521
A521 is an interacting galaxy cluster located at z=0.247, hosting a low
frequency radio halo connected to an eastern radio relic. Previous Chandra
observations hinted at the presence of an X-ray brightness edge at the position
of the relic, which may be a shock front. We analyze a deep observation of A521
recently performed with XMM-Newton in order to probe the cluster structure up
to the outermost regions covered by the radio emission. The cluster atmosphere
exhibits various brightness and temperature anisotropies. In particular, two
cluster cores appear to be separated by two cold fronts. We find two shock
fronts, one that was suggested by Chandra and that is propagating to the east,
and another to the southwestern cluster outskirt. The two main interacting
clusters appear to be separated by a shock heated region, which exhibits a
spatial correlation with the radio halo. The outer edge of the radio relic
coincides spatially with a shock front, suggesting this shock is responsible
for the generation of cosmic ray electrons in the relic. The propagation
direction and Mach number of the shock front derived from the gas density jump,
M = 2.4 +/- 0.2, are consistent with expectations from the radio spectral
index, under the assumption of Fermi I acceleration mechanism
Testing the radio halo-cluster merger scenario. The case of RXCJ2003.5-2323
We present a combined radio, X-ray and optical study of the galaxy cluster
RXCJ2003.5-2323. The cluster hosts one of the largest, most powerful and
distant giant radio halos known to date, suggesting that it may be undergoing a
strong merger process. The aim of our multiwavelength study is to investigate
the radio-halo cluster merger scenario. We studied the radio properties of the
giant radio halo in RXCJ2003.5-2323 by means of new radio data obtained at 1.4
GHz with the Very Large Array, and at 240 MHz with the Giant Metrewave Radio
Telescope, in combination with previously published GMRT data at 610 MHz. The
dynamical state of the cluster was investigated by means of X-ray Chandra
observations and optical ESO--NTT observations. Our study confirms that
RXCJ2003.5-2323 is an unrelaxed cluster. The unusual filamentary and clumpy
morphology of the radio halo could be due to a combination of the filamentary
structure of the magnetic field and turbulence in the inital stage of a cluster
merger.Comment: 10 page, 10 figures, accepted for publication on A&
Is the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect responsible for the observed steepening in the spectrum of the Coma radio halo ?
The spectrum of the radio halo in the Coma cluster is measured over almost
two decades in frequency. The current radio data show a steepening of the
spectrum at higher frequencies, which has implications for models of the radio
halo origin. There is an on-going debate on the possibility that the observed
steepening is not intrinsic to the emitted radiation, but is instead caused by
the SZ effect. Recently, the Planck satellite measured the SZ signal and its
spatial distribution in the Coma cluster allowing to test this hypothesis.
Using the Planck results, we calculated the modification of the radio halo
spectrum by the SZ effect in three different ways. With the first two methods
we measured the SZ-decrement within the aperture radii used for flux
measurements of the halo at the different frequencies. First we adopted the
global compilation of data from Thierbach et al. and a reference aperture
radius consistent with those used by the various authors. Second we used the
available brightness profiles of the halo at different frequencies to derive
the spectrum within two fixed apertures, and derived the SZ-decrement using
these apertures. As a third method we used the quasi-linear correlation between
the y and the radio-halo brightness at 330 MHz discovered by Planck to derive
the modification of the radio spectrum by the SZ-decrement in a way that is
almost independent of the adopted aperture radius. We found that the spectral
modification induced by the SZ-decrement is 4-5 times smaller than that
necessary to explain the observed steepening. Consequently a break or cut-off
in the spectrum of the emitting electrons is necessary to explain current data.
We also show that, if a steepening is absent from the emitted spectrum, future
deep observations at 5 GHz with single dishes are expected to measure a halo
flux in a 40 arcmin radius that would be 7-8 times higher than currently seen.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, accepted in Astronomy and Astrophysics (date of
acceptance 19/08/2013
Radio halos in merging clusters of galaxies
We present the preliminary results of 235 MHz, 327 MHz and 610 MHz
observations of the galaxy cluster A3562 in the core of the Shapley
Concentration. The purpose of these observations, carried out with the Giant
Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT, Pune, India) was to study the radio halo
located at the centre of A3562 and determine the shape of its radio spectrum at
low frequencies, in order to understand the origin of this source. In the
framework of the re--acceleration model, the preliminary analysis of the halo
spectrum suggests that we are observing a young source (few yrs) at the
beginning of the re--acceleration phase.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures. Proceedings of IAU Colloquium 195 - Outskirts of
Galaxy Clusters: intense life in the suburb
A retrograde approach for liver gene transfer
no abstract availabl
Supersymmetric Field-Theoretic Models on a Supermanifold
We propose the extension of some structural aspects that have successfully
been applied in the development of the theory of quantum fields propagating on
a general spacetime manifold so as to include superfield models on a
supermanifold. We only deal with the limited class of supermanifolds which
admit the existence of a smooth body manifold structure. Our considerations are
based on the Catenacci-Reina-Teofillatto-Bryant approach to supermanifolds. In
particular, we show that the class of supermanifolds constructed by
Bonora-Pasti-Tonin satisfies the criterions which guarantee that a
supermanifold admits a Hausdorff body manifold. This construction is the
closest to the physicist's intuitive view of superspace as a manifold with some
anticommuting coordinates, where the odd sector is topologically trivial. The
paper also contains a new construction of superdistributions and useful results
on the wavefront set of such objects. Moreover, a generalization of the
spectral condition is formulated using the notion of the wavefront set of
superdistributions, which is equivalent to the requirement that all of the
component fields satisfy, on the body manifold, a microlocal spectral condition
proposed by Brunetti-Fredenhagen-K\"ohler.Comment: Final version to appear in J.Math.Phy
Gamma ray emission and stochastic particle acceleration in galaxy clusters
FERMI (formely GLAST) will shortly provide crucial information on
relativistic particles in galaxy clusters. We discuss non-thermal emission in
the context of general calculations in which relativistic particles (protons
and secondary electrons due to proton-proton collisions) interact with MHD
turbulence generated in the cluster volume during cluster mergers. Diffuse
cluster-scale radio emission (Radio Halos) and hard X-rays are produced during
massive mergers while gamma ray emission, at some level, is expected to be
common in galaxy clusters.Comment: 4 pages, 2 Figure, proc. of the 4th Heidelberg International
Symposium on High Energy Gamma-ray Astronom
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