Issue |
A&A
Volume 685, May 2024
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A68 | |
Number of page(s) | 20 | |
Section | Cosmology (including clusters of galaxies) | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202348398 | |
Published online | 07 May 2024 |
Radio surface fluctuations in radio relics⋆
1
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
e-mail: pdominguezfernandez@cfa.harvard.edu
2
Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università di Bologna, Via P. Gobetti 93/2, 40129 Bologna, Italy
3
INAF – Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna, Via Gobetti 93/3, 40129 Bologna, Italy
4
Department of Physics, College of Natural Sciences UNIST, Ulsan 44919, Republic of Korea
5
Department of Earth Sciences, Pusan National University, Pusan 46241, Republic of Korea
Received:
25
October
2023
Accepted:
15
February
2024
Recent observations have revealed detailed structures of radio relics across a wide range of frequencies. In this work, we performed three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamical (3D MHD) simulations of merger shocks propagating through a turbulent magnetized intracluster medium. We then employed on-the-fly Lagrangian particles to explore the physical processes behind the origination of radio substructures and their appearance in high and low-frequency observations. We employed two cosmic-ray (CR) electron acceleration models, with a fresh injection of electrons from the thermal pool and the re-acceleration of mildly relativistic electrons. We used the relative surface brightness fluctuations, δSν, to define a “degree of patchiness.” First, we found that patchiness is produced if the shock’s surface has a distribution of Mach numbers, rather than a single Mach number. Second, radio relics appear patchier if the Mach number distribution consists of a large percentage of low Mach numbers (ℳ ≲ 2.5). Furthermore, as the frequency increases, the patchiness also becomes larger. Nevertheless, if radio relics are patchy at high frequencies (e.g., 18.6 GHz), they necessarily will also be patchy at low frequencies (e.g., 150 MHz). Then, to produce noticeable differences in the patchiness at low and high frequencies, the shock front should have a Mach number spread of σℳ ≳ 0.3 − 0.4. Finally, the extent of the patchiness depends on the Mach number distribution as well as the CR acceleration model. We propose δSν as a potential tool for extracting merger shock properties and information on particle acceleration processes at shocks in radio observations.
Key words: acceleration of particles / magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) / radiation mechanisms: non-thermal / shock waves / galaxies: clusters: general / galaxies: clusters: intracluster medium
© The Authors 2024
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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