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Etienne Pointecouteau

Publications and source records attributed to Etienne Pointecouteau.

42 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

The impact of dust on the scaling properties of galaxy clusters

We investigate the effect of dust on the scaling properties of galaxy clusters based on hydrodynamic N-body simulations of structure formation. We have simulated five dust models plus a radiative cooling and adiabatic models using the same initial conditions for all runs. The numerical implementation of dust was based on the analytical computations of Montier and Giard (2004). We set up dust simulations to cover different combinations of dust parameters that put in evidence the effects of size and abundance of dust grains. Comparing our radiative plus dust cooling runs to a purely radiative cooling simulation we find that dust has an impact on cluster scaling relations. It mainly affects the normalisation of the scalings (and their evolution), whereas it introduces no significant differences on their slopes. The strength of the effect depends critically on the dust abundance and grain size parameters as well as on the cluster scaling. Indeed, cooling due to dust is effective at the cluster regime and has a stronger effect on the "baryon driven" statistical properties of clusters such as $L_{\rm X}-M$, $Y- M$, $S-M$ scaling relations. Major differences, relative to the radiative cooling model, are as high as 25% for the $L_{\rm X}-M$ normalisation, and about 10% for the $Y-M$ and $S-M$ normalisations at redshift zero. On the other hand, we find that dust has almost no impact on the "dark matter driven" $T_{\rm mw}-M$ scaling relation. The effects are found to be dependent in equal parts on both dust abundances and grain sizes distributions for the scalings investigated in this paper. Higher dust abundances and smaller grain sizes cause larger departures from the radiative cooling (i.e. with no dust) model.

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The mass missing problem in clusters: dark matter or modified dynamics?

The widely accepted dark matter hypothesis offers a seductive solution to missing mass problems (galaxies, clusters of galaxies, gravitational collapse in structure formation,...). However the physical nature of the Dark Matter itself is still unknown. Alternatively, it has been proposed that apparent dynamical evidence of dark matter is due to a modification of Newtons's law of gravitation. Here we revisit the Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) theories at the scale of galaxy clusters. Using hydrodynamical simulations, we derived quantities such as the density and the temperature of the ICM. We compared those MOND simulated predictions to high quality X-ray density and temperature profiles observed down to ~0.5 the virial radius. If the density profiles seems in acceptable agreement, the simulated temperature show a constant increase with the radius whereas the observed profiles show a flat to a mild decrease shape down to ~0.5 Rvirial . We also computed the dynamical MOND mass for 8 X-ray clusters observed with XMM-Newton. If the MOND mass helps to lower the discrepancy with the baryonic mass by ~20%, still ~80% of the mass in clusters is unaccounted by baryons. In order to solve this problem and to reconcile MOND with clusters observations, we investigated the possibility of an added dark baryonic component. We assumed a component of massive neutrinos to fill the remaining discrepancy between the observed MOND dynamical mass and the baryonic mass. This led us to derive a tied observational lower limit for the neutrino mass, m_nu > 1.06 eV.

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New constraints on MOND from galaxy clusters

We revisit the application of Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) to galaxy clusters. We confront the high quality X-ray data for eight clusters of galaxies observed by the \xmm satellite with the predictions of MOND. We obtain a ratio of the MOND dynamical mass to the baryonic mass of $M_m/M_b=4.94\pm 0.50$ in the outer parts (i.e $r\sim 0.5$ ~ R$_{vir}$), in the concordance cosmological model where the predicted asymptotic ratio, if any baryons are present, is $7.7^{+1.4}_{-1.1}$ (at $r\geq 0.3$ ~ R$_{vir}$). We confirm that the MOND paradigm lowers the discrepancy between the binding mass and the baryonic mass in clusters by a factor of $\sim 1.6$ at about half the virial radius. However, at this radius about 80% of the mass is still missing, and as pointed out by \citet{sanders03}, this necessitates a component of dark baryons or neutrinos in the cluster core. Concerning the neutrino hypothesis, application of the new data requires a minimum neutrino mass of $m_ν>1.74\pm 0.34$ eV to fill this gap. The corresponding 2$σ$ lower limit of $m_ν>1.06$ eV is marginally inconsistent with the current constraints from the cluster number counts, and from the CMB and large scale structure data. MOND must invoke neutrinos to represent the main component that account for the missing mass problem in clusters.

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Modeling the formation of galaxy clusters in MOND

We use a one dimensional hydrodynamical code to study the evolution of spherically symmetric perturbations in the framework of Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). The code evolves spherical gaseous shells in an expanding Universe by employing a MOND-type relationship between the fluctuations in the density field and the gravitational force, $g$. We focus on the evolution of initial density perturbations of the form $δ_{i}\sim r_{i}^{-s}$ for $0<s<3$. A shell is initially cold and remains so until it encounters the shock formed by the earlier collapse of shells nearer to the centre. During the early epochs $g$ is sufficiently large and shells move according to Newtonian gravity. As the physical size of the perturbation increases with time, $g$ gets smaller and the evolution eventually becomes MOND dominated. However, the density in the inner collapsed regions is large enough that they re-enter the Newtonian regime. The evolved gas temperature and density profiles tend to a universal form that is independent of the the slope, $s$, and of the initial amplitude. An analytic explanation of this intriguing result is offered. Over a wide range of scales, the temperature, density and entropy profiles in the simulations, depend on radius roughly like $r^{0.5}$, $r^{-1.5}$ and $r^{1.5}$, respectively. We compare our results with XMM-{\it Newton} and {\it Chandra} observations of clusters. The temperature profiles of 16 observed clusters are either flat or show a mild decrease at $R\gtsim 200\rm kpc$. MOND profiles show a significant increase that cannot reconciled with the data. Our simulated MOND clusters are substantially denser than the observed clusters. It remains to be seen whether these difficulties persist in three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations with generic initial conditions.

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Chandra Analysis and Mass Estimation of the Lensing Cluster of Galaxies CL0024+17

We present a detailed analysis of Chandra X-ray observations of the lensing cluster of galaxies CL0024+17 at z=0.395. We found that the radial temperature profile is consistent with being isothermal out to ~600 kpc and that the average X-ray temperature is 4.47 (+0.83, -0.54) keV. The X-ray surface brightness profile is represented by the sum of extended emission centered at the central bright elliptical galaxy with a small core of 50 kpc and more extended emission which can be well described by a spherical beta-model with a core radius of about 210 kpc. Assuming the X-ray emitting gas to be in hydrostatic equilibrium, we estimated the X-ray mass within the arc radius and found it is significantly smaller than the strong lensing mass by a factor of about 2--3. We detected a strong redshifted iron K line in the X-ray spectrum from the cluster for the first time and find the metal abundance to be 0.76 (+0.37, -0.31) solar.

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Chandra Spectroscopy and Mass Estimation of the Lensing Cluster of Galaxies CL0024+17

We present the X-ray analysis and the mass estimation of the lensing cluster of galaxies CL0024+17 with Chandra. We found that the temperature profile is consistent with being isothermal and the average X-ray temperature is 4.47 (+0.83, -0.54) keV. The X-ray surface brightness profile is represented by the sum of emissions associated with the central three bright elliptical galaxies and the emission from intracluster medium (ICM) which can be well described by a spherical beta-model. Assuming the ICM to be in the hydrostatic equilibrium, we estimated the X-ray mass and found it is significantly smaller than the strong lensing mass by a factor of 3.

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