# Gentle heating by mixing in cooling flow clusters

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates through simulations that jets inflating bubbles in galaxy clusters mix hot gas with the intra-cluster medium over tens of millions of years, providing a gentle and sustained heating mechanism that smooths AGN activity effects.

## Contribution

It introduces a long-term mixing process driven by vortices in jet-inflated bubbles, explaining the gentle heating of the ICM and smoothing AGN activity impacts.

## Key findings

- Mixing occurs immediately after jet launch and lasts for tens of millions of years.
- Vortices formed during bubble inflation facilitate hot gas mixing with the ICM.
- This process results in a gentle, sustained heating of the intra-cluster medium.

## Abstract

We analyze three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of the interaction of jets and the bubbles they inflate with the intra-cluster medium (ICM), and show that the heating of the ICM by mixing hot bubble gas with the ICM operates over tens of millions of years, and hence can smooth the sporadic activity of the jets. The inflation process of hot bubbles by propagating jets forms many vortices, and these vortices mix the hot bubble gas with the ICM. The mixing, hence the heating of the ICM, starts immediately after the jets are launched, but continues for tens of millions of years. We suggest that the smoothing of the active galactic nucleus (AGN) sporadic activity by the long-lived vortices accounts for the recent finding of a gentle energy coupling between AGN heating and the ICM.