The XMM Cluster Survey: The interplay between the brightest cluster galaxy and the intra-cluster medium via AGN feedback

TL;DR

This study explores how the brightest cluster galaxy's AGN feedback influences the intra-cluster medium, revealing different dominant processes in groups versus clusters and proposing a new temperature-based classification.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the interplay between BCGs, their black holes, and the ICM, including a novel empirical definition of clusters and groups based on 2 keV temperature.

Findings

Gas cooling dominates in systems with Tx > 2 keV.

AGN feedback is more influential in systems with Tx < 2 keV.

BCGs in massive clusters are more likely to host radio-loud AGN.

Abstract

Using a sample of 123 X-ray clusters and groups drawn from the XMM-Cluster Survey first data release, we investigate the interplay between the brightest cluster galaxy (BCG), its black hole, and the intra-cluster/group medium (ICM). It appears that for groups and clusters with a BCG likely to host significant AGN feedback, gas cooling dominates in those with Tx > 2 keV while AGN feedback dominates below. This may be understood through the sub-unity exponent found in the scaling relation we derive between the BCG mass and cluster mass over the halo mass range 10^13 < M500 < 10^15Msol and the lack of correlation between radio luminosity and cluster mass, such that BCG AGN in groups can have relatively more energetic influence on the ICM. The Lx - Tx relation for systems with the most massive BCGs, or those with BCGs co-located with the peak of the ICM emission, is steeper than that for those with the least massive and most offset, which instead follows self-similarity. This is evidence that a combination of central gas cooling and powerful, well fuelled AGN causes the departure of the ICM from pure gravitational heating, with the steepened relation crossing self-similarity at Tx = 2 keV. Importantly, regardless of their black hole mass, BCGs are more likely to host radio-loud AGN if they are in a massive cluster (Tx > 2 keV) and again co-located with an effective fuel supply of dense, cooling gas. This demonstrates that the most massive black holes appear to know more about their host cluster than they do about their host galaxy. The results lead us to propose a physically motivated, empirical definition of 'cluster' and 'group', delineated at 2 keV.