Plasma physics in clusters of galaxies

Plasma Physics in Clusters of Galaxies

Magnetised plasma turbulence in clusters of galaxies

Cluster plasmas are magnetised already at very low magnetic field strength. Low collisionality implies that conservation of the first adiabatic invariant results in an anisotropic viscous stress (Braginskii viscosity) or, equivalently, anisotropic plasma pressure. This triggers firehose and mirror instabilities, which have growth rates proportional to the wavenumber down to scales of the order ...

Buoyant radio plasma in clusters of galaxies

Radio galaxies are known to inflate lobes of hot relativistic plasmas into the intergalactic medium. Here we present hydrodynamical and magnetohydrodynamical simulations of these hot plasma bubbles in FRII objects. We focus on the later stages of their evolution after the jet has died down and after the bow shock that surrounded the lobes at earlier stages has vanished. We investigate the evolu...

Plasma Instabilities and Magnetic Field Growth in Clusters of Galaxies

We show that under very general conditions, cluster plasmas threaded by weak magnetic fields are subject to very fast growing plasma instabilities driven by the anisotropy of the plasma pressure (viscous stress) with respect to the local direction of the magnetic field. Such an anisotropy will naturally arise in any weakly magnetized plasma that has low collisionality and is subject to stirring...

Globular Clusters in Dense Clusters of Galaxies

Deep imaging data from the Keck II telescope are employed to study the globular cluster (GC) populations in the cores of six rich Abell clusters. The sample includes A754, A1644, A2124, A2147, A2151, and A2152 and covers the redshift range z = 0.035–0.066. These clusters also span a range in morphology from spiral-rich, irregular systems to centrally concentrated cD clusters rich in early-type ...