Constraining the Nature of X-ray Cavities in Clusters and Galaxies

We present results from an extensive survey of 64 cavities in the X-ray halos of clusters, groups and normal elliptical galaxies. We show that the evolution of the size of the cavities as they rise in the X-ray atmosphere is inconsistent with the standard model of adiabatic expansion of purely hydrodynamic models. We also note that the majority of the observed bubbles should have already been shredded apart by Rayleigh-Taylor and Richtmyer-Meshkov instabilities if they were of purely hydrodynamic nature. Instead we find that the data agrees much better with a model where the cavities are magnetically dominated and inflated by a current-dominated magneto-hydrodynamic jet model, recently developed by Li et al. (2006) and Nakamura et al. (2006). We conduct complex MonteCarlo simulations of the cavity detection process including incompleteness effects to reproduce the cavity sample’s characteristics. We find that the current-dominated model agrees within 1σ, whereas the other models can be excluded at > 5σ confidence. To bring hydrodynamic models into better agreement, cavities would have to be continuously inflated. However, these assessments are dependent on our correct understanding of the detectability of cavities in X-ray atmospheres, and will await confirmation when automated cavity detection tools become available in the future. Our results have considerable impact on the energy budget associated with active galactic nucleus feedback. Subject headings: cooling flows — X-rays: ISM — X-rays: galaxies: clusters — galaxies: clusters: general — instabilities — MHD