Abstract
The high signal to noise and good point spread function of XMM have allowed the first detailed study of the interaction between the thermal and radio emitting plasma in the central regions of M87. We show that the X-ray emitting structure, previously seen by ROSAT, is thermal in nature and that the east and southwest extensions in M87's X-ray halo have a significantly lower temperature (kT= 1.5 keV) than the surrounding ambient medium (kT= 2.3 keV). There is little or no evidence for non-thermal emission with an upper limit on the contribution of a power law component of spectral index flatter than 3 being less than 1% of the flux in the region of the radio lobes.
Highlights
The giant elliptical galaxy M 87 is located at the center of the X-ray diffuse emission of the irregular Virgo Cluster (Fabricant et al 1980)
Except for the region in the E-arm described as the eastern “ear” (Harris et al 2000) where we find good coincidence between our contours and Owen’s map, the overlay clearly shows that the ionisation structure of the X-ray arms does not exactly lie on the radio lobes
The absence of Fe Kα emission from the arms is noticeable in Fig. 2 since, at the same distance from the center, Fe Kα is clearly detected in the ambient medium
Summary
The giant elliptical galaxy M 87 is located at the center of the X-ray diffuse emission of the irregular Virgo Cluster (Fabricant et al 1980). In the same region of space a pair of relativistic jets is emerging from the active nucleus of M 87, ejecting energy into this environment at an estimated rate of 1044 ergs s−1 in the form of relativistic plasma (e.g. Owen et al 2000) How these two media interact and if this leads to a heating of the intra-cluster plasma is still a matter of debate. Churazov et al (2000) have recently modeled this process with specific application to M 87 to explain both the radio lobes and the surrounding X-ray structures In this model, the ambient gas is captured and uplifted by the relativistic gas; the bubble expands and transforms itself into a torus rising in the potential well, and one expects to find thermal gas, originating in the central regions, in the cavity of the torus.
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