Hot Bubbles from Active Galactic Nuclei as a Heat Source in Cooling Flow Clusters

Abstract

The hot plasma permeating clusters of galaxies often shows a central peak in the X-ray surface brightness that is coincident with a drop in entropy. This is taken as evidence for a cooling flow where the radiative cooling in the central regions of a cluster causes a slow subsonic inflow. Searches in all wavebands have revealed significantly less cool gas than predicted indicating that the mass deposition rate of cooling flows is much lower than expected. However, most cooling flow clusters host an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) at their centres. AGN can inflate large bubbles of hot plasma that subsequently rise through the cluster atmosphere, thus stirring this gas. Here we report on the results from highly resolved hydrodynamic simulations which for the first time show that buoyant bubbles increase the cooling time in the inner cluster regions and thereby significantly reduce the deposition of cold gas. This work demonstrates that the action of AGN in the centres of cooling flow clusters can explain the observed absence of large quantities of cooled gas.