Soft and hard X-ray excess emission in Abell 3112 observed with Chandra

TL;DR

This study analyzes Chandra observations of galaxy cluster A3112, revealing excess X-ray emission likely of non-thermal origin due to relativistic electrons, with implications for understanding cluster physics.

Contribution

It demonstrates the presence of excess X-ray emission in A3112 and argues for its non-thermal origin, supported by multi-instrument comparison and analysis.

Findings

Excess X-ray emission detected beyond hot gas contribution

Evidence suggests non-thermal origin linked to relativistic electrons

Excess consistent across Chandra, XMM MOS, and PN instruments

Abstract

Chandra ACIS-S observations of the galaxy cluster A3112 feature the presence of an excess of X-ray emission above the contribution from the diffuse hot gas, which can be equally well modeled with an additional non-thermal power-law model or with a low-temperature thermal model of low metal abundance. We show that the excess emission cannot be due to uncertainties in the background subtraction or in the Galactic HI column density. Calibration uncertainties in the ACIS detector that may affect our results are addressed by comparing the Chandra data to XMM MOS and PN spectra. While differences between the three instruments remain, all detect the excess in similar amounts, providing evidence against an instrumental nature of the excess. Given the presence of non-thermal radio emission near the center of A3112, we argue that the excess X-ray emission is of non-thermal nature and distributed throughout the entire X-ray bandpass, from soft to hard X-rays. The excess can be explained with the presence of a population of relativistic electrons with ~7% of the cluster's gas pressure. We also discuss a possible thermal nature of the excess, and examine the problems associated with such interpretation.