Explaining the Energetic AGN Outburst of MS0735+7421 with Massive Slow Jets

TL;DR

This study uses hydrodynamical simulations to demonstrate that slow, massive, wide jets from an active galactic nucleus can create the large X-ray cavities observed in galaxy cluster MS0735+7421, explaining its energetic outburst.

Contribution

The paper introduces a model where slow, massive, wide jets reproduce the observed bubble morphology, providing new insights into AGN feedback mechanisms in galaxy clusters.

Findings

Jets with ~0.1c velocity and ~70° opening angle reproduce observed bubbles.

AGN activity expelled most of the cooled gas back into the ICM.

The energy released matches the observed ~10^{62} erg in the cluster.

Abstract

By conducting axisymmetrical hydrodynamical numerical simulations (2.5 dimensional code) we show that slow, massive, wide jets can reproduce the morphology of the huge X-ray deficient bubble pair in the cluster of galaxies MS0735+7421. The total energy of the jets, composed of the energy in the bubble pair and in the shock wave, is constraint by observations conducted by McNamara et al. (2009) to be ~10^{62}erg. We show that two opposite jets that are active for ~100Myr, each with a launching half opening angle of ~70 degrees, an initial velocity of ~0.1c, and a total mass loss rate of the two jets of ~100 Mo/year, can account for the observed morphology. Rapidly precessing narrow jets can be used instead of wide jets. In our model the cluster suffered from a cooling catastrophe ~100Myr ago. Most of the mass that cooled, ~10^{10} Mo, was expelled back to the intracluster medium (ICM) by the AGN activity and is inside the bubbles now, ~10% formed stars, and ~10% of the cold gas was accreted by the central black hole and was the source of the outburst energy. This type of activity is similar to that expected to occur in galaxy formation.