Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

On The Relationship Between Cooling Flows And Bubbles, Ig Mccarthy, A Babul, N Katz, Ml Balogh

Astronomy Department Faculty Publication Series

A common feature of the X-ray bubbles observed in Chandra images of some "cooling flow" clusters is that they appear to be surrounded by bright, cool shells. Temperature maps of a few nearby luminous clusters reveal that the shells consist of the coolest gas in the clusters—much cooler than the surrounding medium. Using simple models, we study the effects of this cool emission on the inferred cooling flow properties of clusters. We find that the introduction of bubbles into model clusters that do not have cooling flows results in temperature and surface brightness profiles that resemble those seen in nearby …