Cold fronts and metal anisotropies in the X-ray cool core of the galaxy cluster Zw1742+3306

TL;DR

This study characterizes the dynamic X-ray cool core of galaxy cluster Zw1742+3306, revealing cold fronts, a weak shock, and metal-rich anisotropic structures, suggesting complex gas motions and AGN influence.

Contribution

First detailed analysis of the X-ray properties of Zw1742+3306's cool core, highlighting cold fronts, shocks, and metal anisotropies linked to gas sloshing or AGN activity.

Findings

Detection of cold fronts and a weak shock in the core

Identification of a metal-rich, elongated anisotropic structure

Evidence of complex gas dynamics possibly driven by AGN or sloshing

Abstract

(Context) In recent years, our understanding of the cool cores of galaxy clusters has changed. Once thought to be relatively simple places where gas cools and flows toward the centre, now they are believed to be very dynamic places where heating from the central Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) and cooling, as inferred from active star formation, molecular gas, and Halpha nebulosity, find an uneasy energetic balance. (Aims) We want to characterize the X-ray properties of the nearby cool-core cluster Zw1742+3306, selected because it is bright at X-ray (with a flux greater than 1e-11 erg/s/cm2 in the 0.1-2.4 keV band) and Halpha wavelengths (Halpha luminosity > 1e40 erg/s). (Methods) We used Chandra data to analyze the spatial and spectral properties of the cool core of Zw1742+3306, a galaxy cluster at z=0.0757 that emits in Halpha and presents the brightest central galaxy located in a diffuse X-ray emission with multiple peaks in surface brightness. (Results) We show that the X-ray cool core of the galaxy cluster Zw1742+3306 is thermodynamically very active with evidence of cold fronts and a weak shock in the surface brightness map and of an apparently coherent, elongated structure with metallicity greater than the value measured in the surrounding ambient gas by about 50 per cent. This anisotropic structure is 280 x 90 kpc2 and is aligned with the cold fronts and with the X-ray emission on larger scales. We suggest that all these peculiarities in the X-ray emission of Zw1742+3306 are either a very fine-tuned output of a sloshing gas in the cluster core or the product of a metal-rich outflow from the central AGN.