Probable Detection of a Cooler Gas Component in the Perseus Cluster with XRISM

TL;DR

This paper analyzes XRISM observations of the Perseus cluster, revealing a multi-phase gas structure with a cooler component exhibiting significant turbulence and potential links to merging activity and AGN feedback.

Contribution

First detection of a cooler gas component in Perseus with XRISM, characterized by broad emission lines and distinct velocity dispersion, indicating complex gas dynamics.

Findings

Cooler gas component has a temperature of 1.87-2.43 keV.

Cooler gas shows higher velocity dispersion (~300-400 km/s) than hotter gas.

Evidence suggests the cooler gas is associated with merging halos or AGN activity.

Abstract

We present an analysis of the temperature structure of the Perseus cluster atmosphere using XRISM Resolve observations. The average temperature rises from 3.3 keV near the nucleus of NGC 1275 to 8 keV at 10 arcmin (210 kpc), which is consistent with Chandra and XMM measurements. The velocity and velocity dispersion profiles are broadly consistent with those in arXiv:2509.04421. While the gas at altitudes beyond $\sim60$ kpc can be modeled as a single temperature plasma, we find evidence for more than one gas phase in the inner $\sim60$ kpc. The hotter gas component, traced primarily by the Fe He$\alpha$ line, has a velocity dispersion of $\lesssim140$ km s$^{-1}$. We detect a cooler, $\sim1.87-2.43$ keV, gas component with a velocity dispersion of $\sim300-400$ km s$^{-1}$ and a bulk velocity of $\sim 21-213$ km s$^{-1}$ with respect to the central galaxy. These ranges reflect large systematic uncertainties associated with modeling spatial-spectral mixing and the bright central point source. Potential low energy gain variations may add additional uncertainties. The cooler component is identified by broad wings in prominent emission lines, most notably S Ly$\alpha$ and Fe He$\alpha$. This cooler component's Mach number $\sim0.73-0.96$ and non-thermal pressure fraction of $\sim22.9-33.7\%$ are much higher than found for the hotter gas. The cooler gas may be associated with merging halos along the line of sight which formed the cool, sloshing spiral and/or cooling gas being disturbed by the radio jets and lobes.