[Previous] | [Session 66] | [Next]
J. O. Burns (University of Missouri)
Recent x-ray, optical, and radio observations coupled with N-body and gas dynamics numerical simulations reveal a complex environment within clusters of galaxies. This complexity is driven by on-going accretion of matter from large-scale supercluster filaments. Mergers between clusters, along with continuous infall of dark matter and baryons from the cluster periphery, produce long-lived "stormy weather" within the cluster atmosphere. The components of this weather include shocks, turbulence, and >1000 km/sec winds in the intracluster medium. Using new adaptive-mesh refinement hydro/N-body simulations of a \LambdaCDM universe, I will describe the resulting cluster properties that can be tested with present and future observations. These include nonisothermal temperature distributions but with a surprising universal temperature profile, ram pressure from cluster winds that can bend radio tail sources and strip cluster galaxies, and kinetic energy sufficient to power Mpc-sized cluster radio halos.
This project was funded in part using grants from NASA and the National Science Foundation.