Cooling flow

A cooling flow occurs according to the theory that the intracluster medium (ICM) in the centres of galaxy clusters should be rapidly cooling at the rate of tens to thousands of solar masses per year.[1] This should happen as the ICM (a plasma) is quickly losing its energy by the emission of X-rays. The X-ray brightness of the ICM is proportional to the square of its density, which rises steeply towards the centres of many clusters. Also the temperature falls to typically a third or a half of the temperature in the outskirts of the cluster. The typical [predicted] timescale for the ICM to cool is relatively short, less than a billion years. As material in the centre of the cluster cools out, the pressure of the overlying ICM should cause more material to flow inwards (the cooling flow).

In a steady state, the rate of mass deposition, i.e. the rate at which the plasma cools, is given by

where L is the bolometric (i.e. over the entire spectrum) luminosity of the cooling region, T is its temperature, k is the Boltzmann constant and μm is the mean molecular mass.

Cooling flow problem

It is currently thought that the very large amounts of expected cooling are in reality much smaller, as there is little evidence for cool X-ray emitting gas in many of these systems.[2] This is the cooling flow problem. Theories for why there is little evidence of cooling include[3]

Heating by AGN is the most popular explanation, as they emit a lot of energy over their lifetimes, and some of the alternatives listed have theoretical problems.

gollark: Thanks to the wonders of time zones I think I mostly hunt around those times anyway.
gollark: No, about the rarity varying by time of day.
gollark: Are you sure about *that*? It seems arbitrary.
gollark: And why does that affect hunting?
gollark: Why would TJ09 do that instead of just generating them every hour?

See also

References
  1. Fabian A.C.: Cooling flows in clusters of galaxies, Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 1994. 32: 277–318
  2. Peterson, J. R.; Kahn, S. M.; Paerels, F. B. S.; Kaastra, J. S.; Tamura, T.; Bleeker, J. A. M.; Ferrigno, C.; Jernigan, J. G. (2003-06-10). "High‐Resolution X‐Ray Spectroscopic Constraints on Cooling‐Flow Models for Clusters of Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal. 590 (1): 207–224. arXiv:astro-ph/0210662. Bibcode:2003ApJ...590..207P. doi:10.1086/374830. ISSN 0004-637X.
  3. Peterson, J.R.; Fabian, A.C. (2006). "X-ray spectroscopy of cooling clusters". Physics Reports. 427 (1): 1–39. arXiv:astro-ph/0512549. Bibcode:2006PhR...427....1P. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2005.12.007. ISSN 0370-1573.

Further reading
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.