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SIMULATIONS OF MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMICS INSTABILITIES IN INTRACLUSTER MEDIUM INCLUDING ANISOTROPIC THERMAL CONDUCTION

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Tamara Bogdanović1,4, Christopher S. Reynolds1, Steven A. Balbus2 and Ian J. Parrish3,5

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We perform a suite of simulations of cooling cores in clusters of galaxies in order to investigate the effect of the recently discovered heat flux buoyancy instability (HBI) on the evolution of cores. Our models follow the three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics of cooling cluster cores and capture the effects of anisotropic heat conduction along the lines of magnetic field, but do not account for the cosmological setting of clusters or the presence of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Our model clusters can be divided into three groups according to their final thermodynamical state: catastrophically collapsing cores, isothermal cores, and an intermediate group whose final state is determined by the initial configuration of magnetic field. Modeled cores that are reminiscent of real cluster cores show evolution toward thermal collapse on a timescale which is prolonged by a factor of ~2-10 compared with the zero-conduction cases. The principal effect of the HBI is to re-orient field lines to be perpendicular to the temperature gradient. Once the field has been wrapped up onto spherical surfaces surrounding the core, the core is insulated from further conductive heating (with the effective thermal conduction suppressed to less than 10–2 of the Spitzer value) and proceeds to collapse. We speculate that, in real clusters, the central AGN and possibly mergers play the role of "stirrers," periodically disrupting the azimuthal field structure and allowing thermal conduction to sporadically heat the core.


Keywords

conduction; convection; galaxies: clusters: general; instabilities; MHD; plasmas


Dates

Issue 1 (2009 October 10)

Received 2009 May 29, accepted for publication 2009 August 24

Published 2009 September 21



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