Coffee talks
Friday 04/03/2022 @ 11:30, On-line - meet.google.com/sue-bwvk-axf
Chris Riseley (UNIBO-IRA), "Early Results from a MeerKAT-meets-LOFAR Census of Relaxed Clusters"
Clusters of galaxies provide unique testbeds for studying a wide range of physical processes associated with hot gas (thermal components) and magnetic fields (non-thermal components). However, due to the wide variety of interactions clusters undergo over the course of their lifetimes, studying their magnetic fields in detail is difficult. There remain many unanswered questions, such as: what particle acceleration mechanisms are at play in the intracluster medium (ICM)? What is the connection between thermal and non-thermal components in the ICM? And what role do cluster-member galaxies play in seeding the large-scale diffuse radio sources, such as the canonical haloes, mini-haloes, and relics, found in many clusters? The key to unlocking the answers to these questions lies in combining multi-wavelength data across the electromagnetic spectrum, with radio, X-ray, and optical wavelengths providing the most critical insights. In this talk I will present early results from a census of relaxed clusters performed with the two most sensitive radio telescopes in the world currently online -- MeerKAT and the LOw-Frequency ARray (LOFAR) -- in conjunction with X-ray data. I will discuss what we have learned about particle acceleration mechanisms and magnetic fields in the ICM on scales from parsecs to kiloparsecs from our new ultra-sensitive observations, which promise a paradigm shift in our understanding of the thermal/non-thermal connection in relaxed galaxy clusters.