Thermal Conduction in Clusters of Galaxies

Preprint

26 October 2001

preprint
Published by arXiv in arXiv

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.astro-ph/0110567

Abstract

We estimate the thermal conductivity of a weakly collisional magnetized plasma with chaotic magnetic field fluctuations. When the fluctuation spectrum extends over two or more decades in wave-vector, we find that thermal conduction is very efficient; the conduction coefficient is only a factor ~5 below the classical Spitzer estimate. We suggest that conduction could play a significant role in cooling flows in clusters of galaxies.

Keywords

THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY
CLUSTERS OF GALAXIES
WEAKLY COLLISIONAL
CLASSICAL SPITZER
CHAOTIC MAGNETIC
MAGNETIC FIELD
CONDUCTION
GALAXIES

All Related Versions

Version 1, 2001-10-26, ArXiv
Published version: The Astrophysical Journal, 562 (2), L129.

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