THE TAIL OF THE STRIPPED GAS THAT COOLED: H I, Halpha, AND X-RAY OBSERVATIONAL SIGNATURES OF RAM PRESSURE STRIPPING

Journal Article · Mon Feb 01 04:00:00 EST 2010 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/709/2/1203· OSTI ID:21392279

Tonnesen, Stephanie; Bryan, Greg L ^[1]

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1. Department of Astronomy, Columbia University, Pupin Physics Laboratories, New York, NY 10027 (United States)

Galaxies moving through the intracluster medium (ICM) of a cluster of galaxies can lose gas via ram pressure stripping. This stripped gas forms a tail behind the galaxy which is potentially observable. In this paper, we carry out hydrodynamical simulations of a galaxy undergoing stripping with a focus on the gas properties in the wake and their observational signatures. We include radiative cooling in an adaptive hydrocode in order to investigate the impact of a clumpy, multi-phase interstellar medium. We find that including cooling results in a very different morphology for the gas in the tail, with a much wider range of temperatures and densities. The tail is significantly narrower in runs with radiative cooling, in agreement with observed wakes. In addition, we make detailed predictions of H I, Halpha, and X-ray emission for the wake, showing that we generally expect detectable H I and Halpha signatures, but no observable X-ray emission (at least for our chosen ram pressure strength and ICM conditions). We find that the relative strength of the Halpha diagnostic depends somewhat on our adopted minimum temperature floor (below which we set cooling to zero to mimic physics processes not included in the simulation).

• OSTI ID: 21392279
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 709; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
COOLING
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
FLUID MECHANICS
GALAXIES
GALAXY CLUSTERS
HYDRODYNAMICS
IONIZING RADIATIONS
MECHANICS
RADIATIONS
RADIATIVE COOLING
SIMULATION
X RADIATION