Galaxy Clusters: Cosmic High-Energy Laboratories to Study the Structure of Our Universe

Abstract

This contribution illustrates the study of galaxy clusters as astrophysical laboratories as well as probes for the large-scale structure of the Universe. Using the REFLEX Cluster Survey, the measurement of the statistics of the large-scale structure on scales up to 500 $h^{-1}$ Mpc is illustrated. The results clearly favour a low density Universe. Clusters constitute, in addition, well defined astrophysical laboratory environments in which some very interesting large-scale phenomena can be studied. As an illustration we show some spectacular new XMM X-ray spectroscopic results on the thermal structure of cooling flows and the interaction effects of AGN with this hot intracluster medium. The X-ray observations with XMM-Newton show a lack of spectral evidence for large amounts of cooling and condensing gas in the centers of galaxy clusters believed to harbour strong cooling flows. To explain these findings we consider the heating of the core regions of clusters by jets from a central AGN. We find that the power output the AGN jets is well sufficient. The requirements such a heating model has to fulfill are explored and we find a very promising scenario of self-regulated Bondi accretion of the central black hole.