Radiative Cooling and Heating and Thermal Conduction in M87

Abstract

The crisis of the standard cooling flow model brought about by Chandra and XMM-Newton observations of galaxy clusters has led to the development of several models that explore different heating processes in order to assess whether they can quench the cooling flow. Among the most appealing mechanisms are thermal conduction and heating through buoyant gas deposited in the intracluster medium (ICM) by active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We combine Virgo/M87 observations of three satellites (Chandra, XMM-Newton, and BeppoSAX) to inspect the dynamics of the ICM in the center of the cluster. Using the spectral deprojection technique, we derive the physical quantities describing the ICM and determine the extra heating needed to balance the cooling flow, assuming that thermal conduction operates at a fixed fraction of the Spitzer value. We assume that the extra heating is due to buoyant gas, and we fit the data using the model developed by Ruszkowski and Begelman. We derive a scale radius for the model of ~5 kpc, which is comparable with the M87 AGN jet extension, and a required luminosity of the AGN of a few × 1042 ergs s-1, which is comparable to the observed AGN luminosity. We discuss a scenario in which the buoyant bubbles are filled with relativistic particles and magnetic field, which are responsible for the radio emission in M87. The AGN is supposed to be intermittent and to inject populations of buoyant bubbles through a succession of outbursts. We also study the X-ray-cool component detected in the radio lobes and suggest that it is structured in blobs that are tied to the radio buoyant bubbles.