Sculpting cosmic gas into galaxy clusters

Mike McCourt

October 15, 2012

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Abstract: Galaxy clusters are filled with a hot, tenuous plasma known as the intracluster medium, or ICM. I will discuss recent work aimed at understanding how the plasma can cool to form multi-phase gas, and what implications this cooling has for the structure of the ICM. I apply this result to the observed non-self-similarity (analogous to the missing baryon problem) in clusters. I will also discuss a project to understand the temperature profiles in the ICM and what implications this has for convection and turbulent pressure support in clusters.