Radio emission from weak spherical shocks in the outskirts of galaxy clusters

TL;DR

This paper investigates how decelerating spherical shocks in galaxy clusters influence radio emission, showing that the spectra gradually steepen over time, which can explain observed radio relic spectra.

Contribution

It extends previous models by considering shock deceleration in realistic density profiles, revealing how this affects radio spectra and brightness profiles in galaxy clusters.

Findings

Radio spectra steepen gradually from alpha_inj to alpha_inj+0.5 over 0.1-10 GHz.

The model explains the curved spectrum of the radio relic in cluster A2266.

Gradual spectral steepening is consistent with observations of young relic shocks.

Abstract

In Kang (2015) we calculated the acceleration of cosmic-ray electrons and the ensuing radio synchrotron emission at weak spherical shocks that are expected to form in the outskirts of galaxy clusters.There we demonstrated that, at decelerating spherical shocks, the volume integrated spectra of both electrons and radiation deviate significantly from the test-particle power-laws predicted for constant planar shocks, because the shock compression ratio and the flux of injected electrons decrease in time. In this study, we consider spherical blast waves propagating into a constant density core surrounded by an isothermal halo with a decreasing density profile in order to explore how the deceleration rate of the shock speed affects the radio emission from accelerated electrons. The surface brightness profile and the volume-integrated radio spectrum of the model shocks are calculated by assuming a ribbon-like shock surface on a spherical shell and the associated downstream region of relativistic electrons. If the postshock magnetic field strength is about 7 microgauss, at the shock age of ~50 Myr, the volume-integrated radio spectrum steepens gradually with the spectral index from alpha_{inj} to alpha_{inj}+0.5 over 0.1-10 GHz, where alpha_{inj} is the injection index at the shock positionexpected from the diffusive shock acceleration theory. Such gradual steepening could explain the curved radio spectrum of the radio relic in cluster A2266, which was interpreted as a broken power-law by Trasatti et al. (2014), if the relic shock is young enough so that the break frequency falls in around 1 GHz.