Description:

Clusters of galaxies are the largest objects in the Universe with the most massive baryonic component in the form of hot, X-ray emitting gas. Their large sizes and relative simplicity make them ideal laboratories to probe the microphysical properties of intergalactic plasmas. These properties are important for modeling many astrophysical phenomena, from accretion physics and AGN feedback to the evolution of massive galaxies, groups, and clusters. In this talk, I will show how we can use high-resolution X-ray imaging data of galaxy clusters to measure gas turbulence and to probe how magnetic fields modify cluster physics on mean free path scale. The latter provides constraints on the effective viscosity in the bulk intergalactic plasma that is inaccessible by other means. As an application to large-scale physics, I will focus on feedback from supermassive black holes. At the end of my talk, I will discuss the next X-ray observatory, XRISM (launch 2022), and how it will advance our understanding of cluster physics on both large and small scales.

Seminar Speaker: Irina Zhuravleva, University of Chicago

 Host: Tchekhovskoy

Keywords: Physics, Astronomy, Seminar, Colloquium