Properties of Merger-Driven Shocks in Clusters of Galaxies

Abstract

Shock waves have been observed in the outskirts of galaxy clusters. They are commonly interpreted as being driven by mergers of sub-clumps, so are called “merger shocks”. We here report a study of the properties of merger shocks in merging galaxy clusters with cosmological hydrodynamic simulations. As a representative case, we describe the case where sub-clusters with mass ratio ~ 2 go through an almost head-on, binary-like merger. Because of the turbulent nature of hierarchical clustering, shock surfaces are not uniform, but composed of parts with different Mach numbers. As merger shocks expand from the core to the outskirts, the average Mach number, <Ms>, increases. The shocks propagating along the merger axis could be observed as X-ray shocks and/or radio relics. The kinetic energy through the shocks peaks at ~ 1 Gyr after shock launching, or at ~ 1 - 2 Mpc from the core. The most energetic shocks are found to have the kinetic-energy weighted Mach number, <Ms> ≃ 2-3, and the CR-energy weighted Mach number, <Ms>CR ≃ 3-4. We then discuss the observational implications of our results.