A shock front at the radio relic of Abell 2744

Abstract

Radio relics are Mpc-scale diffuse radio sources at the peripheries of galaxy clusters which are thought to trace outgoing merger shocks. We present XMM-Newton and Suzaku observations of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744 (z=0.306), which reveal the presence of a shock front 1.5 Mpc East of the cluster core. The surface-brightness jump coincides with the position of a known radio relic. Although the surface-brightness jump indicates a weak shock with a Mach number $\mathcal{M}=1.7_{-0.3}^{+0.5}$, the plasma in the post-shock region has been heated to a very high temperature ($\sim13$ keV) by the passage of the shock wave. The low acceleration efficiency expected from such a weak shock suggests that mildly relativistic electrons have been re-accelerated by the passage of the shock front.