Feedback Heating with Slow Jets in Cooling Flow Clusters

Abstract

We propose a scenario in which a large fraction, or even most, of the gas cooling to low temperatures of T<10^4 K in cooling flow clusters, directly gains energy from the central black hole. Most of the cool gas is accelerated to non-relativistic high velocities, v ~ 10^3-10^4 km/sec, after flowing through, or close to, an accretion disk around the central black hole. A poorly collimated wind (or double not-well collimated opposite jets) is formed. According to the proposed scenario, this gas inflates some of the X-ray deficient bubbles, such that the average gas temperature inside these bubbles (cavities) in cooling flow clusters is kT_b ~< 100 keV. A large fraction of these bubbles will be very faint, or not detectable, in the radio. The bright rims of these weak smaller bubbles will appear as ripples. We suggest that the X-ray ripples observed in the Perseus cluster, for example, are not sound waves, but rather the rims of radio-faint weak bubbles which are only slightly hotter than their environment. This scenario is incorporated into the moderate cooling flow model; although not a necessary ingredient in that model, it brings it to better agreement with observations. In the moderate cooling flow model a cooling flow does exist, but the mass cooling rate is ~<10% of that in old versions of cooling flow models.