What Sets Temperature Gradients in Galaxy Clusters? Implications for non-thermal pressure support and mass-observable scaling relations

TL;DR

This paper develops a spherical model explaining the origin of temperature gradients in galaxy clusters, highlighting their dependence on cosmological assembly history and implications for mass estimates and non-thermal pressure support.

Contribution

It introduces a cosmologically motivated model for cluster temperature profiles, accounting for accretion history, conduction effects, and turbulence, which improves understanding of cluster thermodynamics.

Findings

Temperature declines with radius outside cluster cores.

Accretion history causes ~10% scatter in temperature at fixed mass.

Convection from the magnetothermal instability provides ~5% non-thermal pressure support.

Abstract

We present a spherically symmetric model for the origin and evolution of the temperature profiles in the hot plasma filling galaxy groups and clusters. We find that the gas in clusters is generically not isothermal, and that the temperature declines with radius at large distances from the cluster center (outside the core- and scale radii). This temperature profile is determined by the accretion history of the halo, and is not quantitatively well-described by a polytropic model. We explain quantitatively how the large-scale temperature gradient persists in spite of thermal conduction and convection. These results are a consequence of the cosmological assembly of clusters and cannot be reproduced with non-cosmological simulations of isolated halos. We show that the variation in halo assembly histories produces a ~10% scatter in temperature at fixed mass. On top of this scatter, conduction decreases the temperature of the gas near the scale radius in massive clusters, which may bias hydrostatic mass estimates inferred from x-ray and SZ observations. As an example application of our model profiles, we use mixing-length theory to estimate the turbulent pressure support created by the magnetothermal instability (MTI): in agreement with our earlier MHD simulations, we find that the convection produced by the MTI can provide ~5% non-thermal pressure support near r_500. The magnitude of this turbulent pressure support is likely to be non-monotonic in halo mass, peaking in ~10^14.5 M_sun halos.