Kavli Affiliate: Michael McDonald
| First 5 Authors: Christian T. Norseth, Daniel R. Wik, John A. ZuHone, Eric D. Miller, Marshall W. Bautz
| Summary:
In the outskirts of galaxy clusters, entropy profiles measured from X-ray
observations of the hot intracluster medium (ICM) drops off unexpectedly. One
possible explanation for this effect is gas clumping, where pockets of cooler
and denser structures within the ICM are present. Current observatories are
unable to directly detect these hypothetical gas clumps. One of the science
drivers of the proposed STAR-X observatory is to resolve these or similar
structures. Its high spatial resolution, large effective area, and low
instrumental background make STAR-X ideal for directly detecting and
characterizing clumps and diffuse emission in cluster outskirts. The aim of
this work is to simulate observations of clumping in clusters to determine how
well STAR-X will be able to detect clumps, as well as what clumping properties
reproduce observed entropy profiles. This is achieved by using yt, pyXSIM,
SOXS, and other tools to inject ideally modeled clumps into three-dimensional
models derived from actual clusters using their observed profiles from other
X-ray missions. Radial temperature and surface brightness profiles are then
extracted from mock observations using concentric annuli. We find that in
simulated observations for STAR-X, a parameter space of clump properties exists
where gas clumps can be successfully identified using wavdetect and masked, and
are able to recover the true cluster profiles. This demonstrates that STAR-X
could be capable of detecting substructure in the outskirts of nearby clusters
and that the properties of both the outskirts and the clumps will be revealed.
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