Re-Acceleration of Fossil Electrons by Shocks Encountering Hot Bubbles in the Outskirts of Galaxy Clusters

Abstract

Galaxy clusters are known to host many active galaxies (AGNs) with radio jets, which could expand to form radio bubbles with relativistic electrons in the intracluster medium (ICM). It has been suggested that fossil relativistic electrons contained in remnant bubbles from extinct radio galaxies can be re-accelerated to radio-emitting energies by merger-driven shocks via diffusive shock acceleration (DSA), leading to the birth of radio relics detected in clusters. In this study we assume that such bubble consist primarily of thermal gas entrained from the surrounding medium and dynamically-insignificant amounts of relativistic electrons. We also consider several realistic models for magnetic fields in the cluster outskirts, including the ICM field that scales with the gas density as $B_{\rm ICM}\propto n_{\rm ICM}^{0.5}$. Then we perform time-dependent DSA simulations of a spherical shock that runs into a lower-density but higher-temperature bubble with the ratio $n_{\rm b}/n_{\rm ICM} \approx T_{\rm ICM}/T_{\rm b}\approx 0.5$. We find that inside the bubble the shock speed increases by about 20 \%, but the Mach number decreases by about 15\% in the case under consideration. In this re-acceleration model, the observed properties of a radio relic such as radio flux, spectral index, and integrated spectrum would be governed mainly by the presence of seed relativistic electrons and the magnetic field profile as well as shock dynamics. Thus it is crucial to understand how fossil electrons are deposited by AGNs in the ICM and how the downstream magnetic field evolves behind the shock in detailed modeling of radio relics.