Showing papers by "Daniel R. Wik published in 2009"

A Suzaku Search for Nonthermal Emission at Hard X-Ray Energies in the Coma Cluster

Abstract: The brightest cluster radio halo known resides in the Coma cluster of galaxies. The relativistic electrons producing this diffuse synchrotron emission should also produce inverse Compton emission that becomes competitive with thermal emission from the intracluster medium (ICM) at hard X-ray energies. Thus far, claimed detections of this emission in Coma are controversial. We present a Suzaku HXD-PIN observation of the Coma cluster in order to nail down its nonthermal hard X-ray content. The contribution of thermal emission to the HXD-PIN spectrum is constrained by simultaneously fitting thermal and nonthermal models to it and a spatially equivalent spectrum derived from an XMM-Newton mosaic of the Coma field. We fail to find statistically significant evidence for nonthermal emission in the spectra which are better described by only a single- or multitemperature model for the ICM. Including systematic uncertainties, we derive a 90% upper limit on the flux of nonthermal emission of 6.0 ? 10?12 erg s?1 cm?2 (20-80 keV, for ? = 2.0), which implies a lower limit on the cluster-averaged magnetic field of B>0.15 ?G. Our flux upper limit is 2.5 times lower than the detected nonthermal flux from RXTE and BeppoSAX. However, if the nonthermal hard X-ray emission in Coma is more spatially extended than the observed radio halo, the Suzaku HXD-PIN may miss some fraction of the emission. A detailed investigation indicates that ~50%-67% of the emission might go undetected, which could make our limit consistent with that of Rephaeli & Gruber and Fusco-Femiano et al. The thermal interpretation of the hard Coma spectrum is consistent with recent analyses of INTEGRAL and Swift data.

Hard X-Ray Properties of the Merging Cluster Abell 3667 as Observed with Suzaku

Abstract: : Wide-band Suzaku data on the merging cluster Abell 3667 were examined for hard X-ray emission in excess to the known thermal component. Suzaku detected X-ray signals in a wide energy band from 0.5 to 40 keV. The hard X-ray (>10 keV) flux observed by the HXD around the cluster center cannot be explained by a simple extension the thermal emission with an average temperature of approx. 7 keV. The emission is most likely to be from a very hot kT > 13.2 keV) thermal component around the cluster center, produced via a strong heating process in a merger. In the north-west radio relic, no signature of non-thermal emission was observed. Using the HXD, the overall upperlimit flux within a 34' x 34' field-of-view around the relic was derived to be 5.3 x 10(exp -12) ergs/s/sq cm in the 10-40 keV band, after subtracting the ICM contribution estimated using the XIS or the XMM-Newton spectra. Directly on the relic region, the upper limit is further tightened by the XIS data to be less than 7.3 x 10(exp -13) erg/s/sq cm, when converted into the 10?40 keV band. The latter value suggest that the average magnetic field within the relic is higher than 1.6 microG. The non-thermal pressure due to magnetic fields and relativistic electrons may be as large as 20% of the thermal pressure in the region.

A Suzaku Search for Non-thermal Emission at Hard X-ray Energies in the Coma Cluster

Abstract: The brightest cluster radio halo known resides in the Coma cluster of galaxies. The relativistic electrons producing this diffuse synchrotron emission should also produce inverse Compton emission that becomes competitive with thermal emission from the ICM at hard X-ray energies. Thus far, claimed detections of this emission in Coma are controversial (Fusco-Femiano et al. 2004; Rossetti & Molendi 2004). We present a Suzaku HXD-PIN observation of the Coma cluster in order to nail down its non-thermal hard X-ray content. The contribution of thermal emission to the HXD-PIN spectrum is constrained by simultaneously fitting thermal and non-thermal models to it and a spatially equivalent spectrum derived from an XMM-Newton mosaic of the Coma field (Schuecker et al. 2004). We fail to find statistically significant evidence for non-thermal emission in the spectra, which are better described by only a single or multi-temperature model for the ICM. Including systematic uncertainties, we derive a 90% upper limit on the flux of non-thermal emission of 6.0x10^-12 erg/s/cm^2 (20-80 keV, for photon index of 2.0), which implies a lower limit on the cluster-averaged magnetic field of B>0.15 microG. Our flux upper limit is 2.5x lower than the detected non-thermal flux from RXTE (Rephaeli & Gruber 2002) and BeppoSAX (Fusco-Femiano et al. 2004). However, if the non-thermal hard X-ray emission in Coma is more spatially extended than the observed radio halo, the Suzaku HXD-PIN may miss some fraction of the emission. A detailed investigation indicates that ~50-67% of the emission might go undetected, which could make our limit consistent with these detections. The thermal interpretation of the hard Coma spectrum is consistent with recent analyses of INTEGRAL (Eckert et al. 2007) and Swift (Ajello et al. 2009) data.