The Properties of X-ray Cold Fronts in a Statistical Sample of Simulated Galaxy Clusters

TL;DR

This study uses cosmological simulations to analyze the frequency and properties of X-ray cold fronts in galaxy clusters, revealing their dependence on cluster mass, morphology, and baryonic physics.

Contribution

It introduces an automated method to identify cold fronts in simulated X-ray maps and explores their statistical occurrence across different cluster masses and redshifts.

Findings

10-12% of projections show cold fronts in the sample.

Cold front occurrence is higher in more massive clusters (40-50%).

Presence of cold fronts correlates with disturbed cluster morphology.

Abstract

We examine the incidence of cold fronts in a large sample of galaxy clusters extracted from a (512h^-1 Mpc) hydrodynamic/N-body cosmological simulation with adiabatic gas physics computed with the Enzo adaptive mesh refinement code. This simulation contains a sample of roughly 4000 galaxy clusters with M > 10^14 M_sun at z=0. For each simulated galaxy cluster, we have created mock 0.3-8.0 keV X-ray observations and spectroscopic-like temperature maps. We have searched these maps with a new automated algorithm to identify the presence of cold fronts in projection. Using a threshold of a minimum of 10 cold front pixels in our images, corresponding to a total comoving length L_cf > 156h^-1 kpc, we find that roughly 10-12% of all projections in a mass-limited sample would be classified as cold front clusters. Interestingly, the fraction of clusters with extended cold front features in our synthetic maps of a mass-limited sample trends only weakly with redshift out to z=1.0. However, when using different selection functions, including a simulated flux limit, the trending with redshift changes significantly. The likelihood of finding cold fronts in the simulated clusters in our sample is a strong function of cluster mass. In clusters with M>7.5x10^14 M_sun the cold front fraction is 40-50%. We also show that the presence of cold fronts is strongly correlated with disturbed morphology as measured by quantitative structure measures. Finally, we find that the incidence of cold fronts in the simulated cluster images is strongly dependent on baryonic physics.