Simulations of Jet Heating in Galaxy Clusters: Successes and Numerical Challenges

Davide Martizzi, Eliot Quataert, Claude-Andre Faucher-Giguere, Drummond Fielding

Published 2018-05-16Version 1

We study idealised hydrodynamical simulations of Perseus-like galaxy cluster cores, with the goal of studying cooling flow regulation by jets generated by active galactic nuclei (AGN). The simulations are performed with the Eulerian code athena using high-resolution Godunov methods with low numerical diffusion. We use novel analysis methods to measure the cooling rate, the total heating rate, the heating rate from weak shocks and the heating rate from the decay of turbulent motions excited by the jet. We find that successful regulation of the cooling flow can be achieved with kinetic jets. Heating is anisotropic and is mostly distributed along the jet axis where the cooling flow is suppressed. Away from the jet axis the cooling flow is reduced by weak shock heating, but not fully suppressed. Turbulence is a significant source of heating only near the cluster centre, but this mechanism becomes inefficient at $\sim$50 kpc scales where it only represents a few % of the total heating rate and where most of the heating is provided by weak shocks. This qualitative picture is in agreement with previous numerical work. However, we find that several details of the simulations depend on the choice made for the hydro solver. This is a consequence of the difficulty of achieving proper numerical convergence for this problem: current physics implementations and resolutions do not properly capture multiphase gas that develops as a consequence of thermal instability. These processes happen at the grid scale and leave numerical solutions sensitive to the properties of the chosen hydro solver.