The new emerging model for the structure of cooling cores in clusters of galaxies

Abstract

New X-ray observations with XMM-Newton show a lack of spectral evidence for large amounts of cooling and condensing gas in the centers of galaxy clusters believed to harbour strong cooling flows. This paper re-explores the cooling flow scenario in the light of the new observations. We explore the diagnostics of the temperature structure of cooling cores with XMM-spectroscopy, tests for intracluster X-ray absorption towards central AGN, the effect of metal abundance inhomogeneities, and the implications of high resolution images in the centers of clusters. We find no evidence of intrinsic absorption in the center of the cooling flows of M 87 and the Perseus cluster. We further consider the effect of cluster rotation in cooling flow regions in the frame of cosmic structure evolution models. Also, the heating of the core regions of clusters by jets from a central AGN is reconsidered. We find that the power of the AGN jets as estimated by their interaction effects with the intracluster medium in several examples is more then sufficient to heat the cooling flows and to reduce the mass deposition rates. We explore in more detail which requirements such a heating model has to fulfill to be consistent with all observations, point out the way such a model could be constructed, and argue that such model building seems to be successful. In summary, it is argued that most observational evidence points towards much lower mass deposition rates than previously inferred in the central region of clusters thought to contain strong cooling flows.