Clusters of Galaxies at Sharp Focus: Cooling Flows and Radio Sources Unveiled by Chandra

Chandra images of galaxy clusters have revealed a wealth of structure unseen by previous generations of low resolution X-ray observatories. In the cores of clusters, bright, irregular X-ray emission is now routinely seen within central dominant galaxies (CDGs) harboring powerful radio sources. The radio sources are interacting with and are often displacing the hot gas leaving cavities in their wakes. The cavities rise buoyantly, transporting up to 10 ergs of energy to the intracluster medium over the life of a cluster. The dynamically important magnetic fields observed in cooling flows may have originated from these cavities. The cooling rates found by Chandra and XMM-Newton are much smaller than previously reported, and they are more in line with the levels of cold gas and star formation seen in other bandpasses. I discuss the emerging correlation between extended Hα emission, star formation, and bright X-ray emission at locations where the cooling time of the keV gas approaches a few hundred million years. Data from a variety of disciplines suggest repeated, short duration bursts of cooling and star formation are occurring, possibly induced and regulated in some instances by the central radio source. Finally, I discuss the interesting possibility that radio sources quench cooling flows, while emphasizing the difficulties with some proposed scenarios.