Authors: Brian O'Shea (MSU; presenting), Sam Skillman (CU), Eric Hallman (CfA), Jack Burns (CU), Britton Smith (MSU)
The baryonic content of galaxy clusters is dominated by the intracluster medium - a hot, diffuse plasma that is threaded with magnetic fields and includes significant populations of relativistic protons and electrons. These relativistic populations in particular are strongly affected by cluster dynamics, including shocks, mergers, and AGN feedback. As a result, the non-thermal emission from the intracluster medium can be used as an exciting probe of the dynamical state and recent history of a galaxy cluster. In this talk I will present recent work done by myself and my collaborators to understand radio and gamma-ray emission from galaxy clusters, using cosmological simulations done with the Enzo adaptive mesh code and including recently-developed prescriptions for shock detection, cosmic ray acceleration, and novel new methods for tracing evolving cosmic ray populations. I also include results from a recent MHD galaxy cluster merger simulation, and demonstrate that mass-radio luminosity and mass-gamma ray luminosity relationships, reminiscent of the mass-X-ray luminosity relationship, exist and can be used in conjunction with other observable quantities to probe the state of galaxy clusters.
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