We review our knowledge about turbulence in the intracluster medium, a very hot, dilute plasma that permeates clusters of galaxies. A thorough understanding of turbulence in the intracluster medium is crucial for the use of clusters to determine cosmological parameters. Moreover, clusters provide a unique laboratory to study a very unique and extreme plasma. Both, the observational evidence as well as results from (magneto-)hydrodynamical simulations are reviewed. In particular, we assess the roles of various drivers of turbulence: accretion and merging, active galactic nuclei, the motion of galaxies and conductive instabilities. It has been shown that the turbulence driven by accretion in galaxy clusters is mostly tangential in the inner regions and isotropic in regions close to the virial radius, while AGN drive mostly radial turbulent motions at close to sonic speeds. On the cluster scale, the energetically dominant mechanism for driving turbulence are major cluster mergers. In this chapter, we will focus on turbulent motions on the large scales—the properties of microphysical turbulence are reviewed elsewhere in this book (see the chapter by Brunetti and Jones).
Brüggen, M., Vazza, F. (2015). Turbulence in the Intracluster Medium. Berlin Heidelberg : Springer-Verlag [10.1007/978-3-662-44625-6_21].
Turbulence in the Intracluster Medium
Vazza, F.Writing – Original Draft Preparation
2015
Abstract
We review our knowledge about turbulence in the intracluster medium, a very hot, dilute plasma that permeates clusters of galaxies. A thorough understanding of turbulence in the intracluster medium is crucial for the use of clusters to determine cosmological parameters. Moreover, clusters provide a unique laboratory to study a very unique and extreme plasma. Both, the observational evidence as well as results from (magneto-)hydrodynamical simulations are reviewed. In particular, we assess the roles of various drivers of turbulence: accretion and merging, active galactic nuclei, the motion of galaxies and conductive instabilities. It has been shown that the turbulence driven by accretion in galaxy clusters is mostly tangential in the inner regions and isotropic in regions close to the virial radius, while AGN drive mostly radial turbulent motions at close to sonic speeds. On the cluster scale, the energetically dominant mechanism for driving turbulence are major cluster mergers. In this chapter, we will focus on turbulent motions on the large scales—the properties of microphysical turbulence are reviewed elsewhere in this book (see the chapter by Brunetti and Jones).I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
