Collision of merger and accretion shocks: formation of Mpc-scale contact discontinuity in the Perseus cluster

Zhang, Congyao; Churazov, Eugene; Dolag, Klaus; Forman, William R.; Zhuravleva, Irina (2020): Collision of merger and accretion shocks: formation of Mpc-scale contact discontinuity in the Perseus cluster. In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 498, No. 1: L130-L134

Abstract

Two Mpc-size contact discontinuities have recently been identified in the XMM-Newton and Suzaku X-ray observations in the outskirts of the Perseus cluster (Walker et al.). These structures have been tentatively interpreted as 'sloshing cold fronts', which are customarily associated with differential motions of the cluster gas, perturbed by a merger. In this study, we consider an alternative scenario, namely, that the most prominent discontinuity, near the cluster virial radius, is the result of the collision between the accretion shock and a 'runaway' merger shock. We also discuss the possible origin of the second discontinuity at similar to 1.2Mpc.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Physics
• Subjects: 500 Science > 530 Physics
• ISSN: 0035-8711
• Language: English