Measuring turbulence and gas motions...
By M. Roncarelli
The X-IFU that will be on board of Athena will allow a major breakthrough in our understanding of the physics of galaxy clusters. Besides thermodynamics quantities, such as density and temperature, that are already measurable by current X-ray instruments, the X-IFU will unveil the kinematics of the intracluster medium, mapping gas velocity and velocity dispersion by studying the emission lines of heavy elements.
In this work, it is simulated a set of realistic X-IFU observation of galaxy clusters with the injection of turbulent motions, to test the accuracy of the X-IFU to recover and map their internal kinematics. It is shown that the X-IFU will be able to map kinematic quantities with great accuracy. This will open the possibility not only to measure intracluster turbulence but also to observe galaxy clusters rotation and the accretion of matter from the large-scale structure of the Universe with unprecedented detail.