Cosmological MHD simulation of a cooling flow cluster

TL;DR

This study uses cosmological MHD simulations to show that cooling processes significantly amplify magnetic fields in galaxy cluster cores, affecting their structure and evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed MHD simulation including cooling, revealing the impact of cooling on magnetic field amplification and structure in galaxy clusters.

Findings

Cooling enhances magnetic field amplification in cluster cores.

Shearing motions are stronger with cooling, leading to increased magnetic field strength.

Magnetic reconnection is reduced in cooled cluster cores.

Abstract

Various observations of magnetic fields in the Intra-Cluster Medium (ICM), most of the time restricted to cluster cores, point towards field strength of the order of a few microG (synchrotron radiation from radio relics and radio halos, inverse Compton radiation in X-rays and Faraday rotation measure of polarised background sources). Both the origin and the spatial structure of galaxy clusters magnetic fields are still under debate. In particular, the radial profile of the magnetic field, from the core of clusters to their outskirts, is of great importance for cosmic rays propagation within the Cosmic Web. In this letter, we highlight the importance of cooling processes in amplifying the magnetic field in the core of galaxy clusters up to one order of magnitude above the typical amplification obtained for a pure adiabatic evolution. We have performed a "zoom'' cosmological simulation of a 3 keV cluster, including dark matter and gas dynamics, atomic cooling, UV heating and star formation using the newly developed MHD solver in the AMR code RAMSES. Magnetic field amplification proceeds mainly through gravitational contraction. Shearing motions due to turbulence provide additional amplification in the outskirts of the cluster, while magnetic reconnection during mergers causes magnetic field dissipation in the core. Cooling processes have a strong impact on the magnetic field structure in the cluster. First, due to the sharp rise of the gas density in the centre, gravitational amplification is significantly amplified, when compared to the non--radiative run. Second, due to cooling processes, shearing motions are much stronger in the core than in the adiabatic case, leading to additional field amplification and no significant magnetic reconnection.