An Atlas of Gas Motions in the TNG-Cluster Simulation: from Cluster Cores to the Outskirts

TL;DR

This study uses the TNG-Cluster simulation to analyze gas motions in galaxy clusters, revealing complex dynamics, correlations with halo properties, and coherence variations from cores to outskirts, aligning with observational data.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of gas kinematics across entire galaxy clusters using the TNG-Cluster simulation, including effects of mergers, feedback, and magnetic fields.

Findings

Gas motions are balanced in cores and intermediate regions.

Outskirts show asymmetric velocity distributions with cosmic accretion signatures.

Velocity structure functions indicate more coherent outskirts and disturbed centers.

Abstract

Galaxy clusters are unique laboratories for studying astrophysical processes and their impact on gas kinematics. Despite their importance, the full complexity of gas motion within and around clusters remains poorly known. This paper is part of a series presenting first results from the new TNG-Cluster simulation, a suite of 352 massive clusters including the full cosmological context, mergers, accretion, baryonic processes, feedback, and magnetic fields. Studying the dynamics and coherence of gas flows, we find that gas motions in cluster cores and intermediate regions are largely balanced between inflows and outflows, exhibiting a Gaussian distribution centered at zero velocity. In the outskirts, even the net velocity distribution becomes asymmetric, featuring a double peak where the second peak reflects cosmic accretion. Across all cluster regions, the resulting net flow distribution reveals complex gas dynamics. These are strongly correlated with halo properties: at a given total cluster mass, unrelaxed, late-forming halos with less massive black holes and lower accretion rates exhibit a more dynamic behavior. Our analysis shows no clear relationship between line-of-sight and radial gas velocities, suggesting that line-of-sight velocity alone is insufficient to distinguish between inflowing and outflowing gas. Additional properties, such as temperature, can help break this degeneracy. A velocity structure function (VSF) analysis indicates more coherent gas motion in the outskirts and more disturbed kinematics towards halo centers. In all cluster regions, the VSF shows a slope close to the theoretical models of Kolmogorov (1/3), except within 50 kpc of the cluster cores, where the slope is significantly steeper. The outcome of TNG-Cluster broadly aligns with observations of the VSF of multiphase gas across different scales in galaxy clusters, ranging from 1 kpc to Megaparsec scales.