Journal
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 379, Issue 4, Pages 1325-1332Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.12032.x
Keywords
conduction; hydrodynamics; galaxies : clusters : general
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We consider the impact of thermal conduction in clusters of galaxies on the (unmagnetized) interface between a cold gaseous cloud and a hotter gas flowing over the cloud ( the so-called cold front). We argue that near the stagnation point of the flow conduction creates a spatially extended layer of constant thickness Delta, where Delta is of the order of similar to root kR/U, where R is the curvature radius of the cloud, U is the velocity of the flow at infinity and k is the conductivity of the gas. For typical parameters of the observed fronts, one finds Delta << R. The formation time of such a layer is similar to R/U. Once the layer is formed, its thickness only slowly varies with the time and the quasi-steady layer may persist for many characteristic time-scales. Based on these simple arguments, one can use the observed width of the cold fronts in galaxy clusters to constrain the effective thermal conductivity of the intra-cluster medium.
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