X-ray and Radio Interactions in the Cores of Cooling Flow Clusters

Abstract

We present high resolution ROSAT x-ray and radio observations of three cooling flow clusters containing steep spectrum radio sources at their cores. All three systems exhibit strong signs of interaction between the radio plasma and the hot intracluster medium. Two clusters, A133 and A2626, show enhanced x-ray emission spatially coincident with the radio source whereas the third cluster, A2052, exhibits a large region of x-ray excess surrounding much of the radio source. Using 3-D numerical simulations, we show that a perturbed jet propagating through a cooling flow atmosphere can give rise to amorphous radio morphologies, particularly in the case where the jet was ``turned off'' and allowed to age passively. In addition, the simulated x-ray surface brightness produced both excesses and deficits as seen observationally.