X-ray Analysis of Filaments in Galaxy Clusters

TL;DR

This study uses deep Chandra X-ray observations to analyze the properties of filaments in galaxy clusters, revealing their thermal and charge exchange characteristics, and examining absorption effects related to molecular gas.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of filament X-ray spectra across multiple galaxy clusters and explores the role of charge exchange and absorption in their spectral features.

Findings

Filament spectra are consistent with a two-temperature thermal model.

Charge exchange can dominate the spectrum in the 0.5-1.0 keV band.

Absorption by molecular gas affects the X-ray spectra around NGC 1275.

Abstract

We perform a detailed X-ray study of the filaments surrounding the brightest cluster galaxies in a sample of nearby galaxy clusters using deep Chandra observations, namely the Perseus, Centaurus and Virgo clusters, and Abell 1795. We compare the X-ray properties and spectra of the filaments in all of these systems, and find that their Chandra X-ray spectra are all broadly consistent with an absorbed two temperature thermal model, with temperature components at 0.75 and 1.7 keV. We find that it is also possible to model the Chandra ACIS filament spectra with a charge exchange model provided a thermal component is also present, and the abundance of oxygen is suppressed relative to the abundance of Fe. In this model, charge exchange provides the dominant contribution to the spectrum in the 0.5-1.0 keV band. However, when we study the high spectral resolution RGS spectrum of the filamentary plume seen in X-rays in Centaurus, the opposite appears to be the case. The properties of the filaments in our sample of clusters are also compared to the X-ray tails of galaxies in the Coma cluster and Abell 3627. In the Perseus cluster, we search for signs of absorption by a prominent region of molecular gas in the filamentary structure around NGC 1275. We do find a decrement in the X-ray spectrum below 2 keV, indicative of absorption. However the spectral shape is inconsistent with this decrement being caused by simply adding an additional absorbing component. We find that the spectrum can be well fit (with physically sensible parameters) with a model that includes both absorption by molecular gas and X-ray emission from the filament, which partially counteracts the absorption.