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Regulation of the X-ray luminosity of clusters of galaxies by cooling and supernova feedback

Nature volume 414, pages 425–427 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

Clusters of galaxies are thought to contain about ten times as much dark matter as baryonic matter1. The dark component therefore dominates the gravitational potential of a cluster, and the baryons confined by this potential radiate X-rays with a luminosity that depends mainly on the gas density in the cluster's core2. Predictions of the X-rays' properties based on models of cluster formation do not, however, agree with the observations. If the models ignore the condensation of cooling gas into stars and feedback from the associated supernovae, they overestimate the X-ray luminosity because the density of the core gas is too high. An early episode of uniformly distributed supernova feedback could rectify this by heating the uncondensed gas and therefore making it harder to compress into the core3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11, but such a process seems to require an implausibly large number of supernovae6,8,12,13,14. Here we show how radiative cooling of intergalactic gas and subsequent supernova heating conspire to eliminate highly compressible low-entropy gas from the intracluster medium. This brings the core entropy and X-ray luminosities of clusters into agreement with the observations, in a way that depends little on the efficiency of supernova heating in the early Universe.

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Figure 1: Threshold entropy for cooling within the age of the universe.
Figure 2: Relation between bolometric X-ray luminosity LX and luminosity-weighted temperature Tlum in clusters and groups of galaxies.

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. Bower and M. Balogh for discussions. G.M.V. receives partial support from NASA, and G.L.B. is supported by NASA through a Hubble fellowship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, 21218, Maryland, USA

    G. Mark Voit

  2. Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 02139, Massachusetts, USA

    Greg L. Bryan

  3. Astrophysics, University of Oxford, Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3RH, UK

    Greg L. Bryan

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Correspondence to G. Mark Voit.

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Voit, G., Bryan, G. Regulation of the X-ray luminosity of clusters of galaxies by cooling and supernova feedback. Nature 414, 425–427 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35106523

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