X-ray Observables of Magnetically Dominated Cavities in Clusters

TL;DR

This paper uses magneto-hydrodynamic simulations to study magnetically dominated cavities in galaxy clusters, showing they resemble observed X-ray cavities and follow current-carrying jet models.

Contribution

It demonstrates that magnetically dominated jet simulations produce cavities similar to observations and reveals their expansion behavior aligns with current-carrying jet models.

Findings

Simulated cavities resemble real X-ray observations in morphology and thermodynamics.

Bubbles expand faster than adiabatic predictions, matching current-carrying jet models.

Analysis of Hydra A and other clusters supports the current-carrying jet scenario.

Abstract

We present results from magneto-hydrodynamic jet simulations in the magnetically dominated regime and find that they inflate cavities into the intracluster medium. Mock Chandra X-ray observations of our simulations show a strong resemblance to real cavities observed in X-ray images of clusters, both in terms of their morphology and thermodynamic structure. An analysis of the evolution of bubble sizes in the multi-cavity system Hydra A, as well as in a large sample of 64 cavities in 32 clusters shows that bubbles tend to expand much faster than expected in the purely adiabatic regime. Instead, we find that the bubbles follow more closely a trend predicted by our current-carrying jet models.