Cluster Cooling Flows: Recent Progress and Outstanding Questions

Abstract

Recent results on cluster cooling flows are reviewed. Observations of excess soft X-ray provides the only direct evidence for a major repository for the cooled gas. Unfortunately, the frequency of occurrence of large excess columns is uncertain. There is also great uncertainty about the physical state of the material producing the absorption. Radio observations have ruled out most forms of cold gas. Recent radio observations show that the plasma in cooling flows is strong magnetized. Models for cooling flows including the dynamical effects of the magnetic field are needed. We also need to understand what ultimately happens to the advected magnetic flux. At present, it appears most likely that the field is by field line reconnection. The radio sources associated with the central galaxies in cluster cooling flows seem to come in two varieties. There are ``lobe-dominated sources'' with strong radio jets and well-defined radio lobes, and ``amorphous'' sources without strong jets or lobes. In the lobe-dominated sources, the radio pressures agree approximately with the pressures of the X-ray emitting thermal gas, the X-ray and radio images anticorrelate, and the radio sources are highly polarized and have very large Faraday rotations. In the amorphous sources, the radio pressures are much smaller than the X-ray pressures, the X-ray and radio images correlate, and the radio sources are strongly depolarized. These results suggest that the lobes in the lobe-dominated sources have displaced the X-ray emitting gas, while in the amorphous sources, the radio and thermal plasma are mixed.