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arXiv · 2608.04757

Non-Thermal Pressure due to Gas Motions in the Intracluster Medium: Confronting XRISM/Resolve with TNG-Cluster Simulations

Erwin T. Lau·Naomi Ota·Daisuke Nagai
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Abstract

Intracluster medium (ICM) gas motions probe cluster assembly, feedback, and non-thermal pressure support, but recent XRISM observations reveal velocity dispersions and non-thermal pressure fractions systematically lower than simulations predict, with extreme systems such as Abell 2029 falling below nearly all simulated clusters. Using the TNG-Cluster simulations, we show that the non-thermal pressure fraction depends sensitively on cool-core state and formation history, and provide a two-scale fitting function capturing both the inner cool-core suppression and outer rise of the radial profile. By forward-modeling mock XRISM observations and comparing them with both projected and intrinsic three-dimensional quantities, we find that azimuthal variations and projection effects contribute to the deficit in the observed velocity dispersion and non-thermal pressure fraction. This bias increases with radius and partially offsets the intrinsic outward rise in the true three-dimensional non-thermal pressure fraction. However, these effects cannot explain the extremely low values of the non-thermal pressure fraction observed in Abell 2029, which fall below approximately the 0th-6th percentiles of the simulated cool-core cluster distribution at every measured radius under both the turbulence-only and turbulence-plus-bulk definitions. The remaining tension points to rare dynamical conditions or missing physics affecting the amplitude of gas motions in current ICM models.

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Erwin T. Lau, Naomi Ota, Daisuke Nagai. 2026-08-05. Non-Thermal Pressure due to Gas Motions in the Intracluster Medium: Confronting XRISM/Resolve with TNG-Cluster Simulations. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.04757

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