Black Hole Exhaust: Feedback and the Role of Radio Plasma in Galaxy Clusters

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Supermassive black holes located in the centers of massive, centrally-located cluster galaxies can serve as engines of powerful, magnetized jets that interact with the intracluster medium and can profoundly affect the flow of heat within the cluster and the formation of stars within the galaxy. The actual physical mechanisms involved in these interactions between these jets and the host cluster are poorly understood and remain a major challenge to astrophysicists. This project aims to perform magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) computer simulations with the goal of understanding how black holes stop clusters from cooling and how stable cluster atmospheres can be constructed that satisfy all observational requirements of temperature, entropy, field strength and topology and gas composition. At the same time, this research will investigate how magnetized jets evolve self consistently in dynamic environments. The proposed simulations will be the first generation of adaptive mesh refinement-MHD (AMR-MHD) simulations of resolved, ballistic jets in self-consistently evolved, realistic clusters. The principal investigator (PI) will construct the first exhaustive parameter study on how radio galaxies evolve for a set of fundamental jet parameters that include magnetic fields.Educationally, this project will provide funding and training of a postdoctoral research scientist and an undergraduate student. In addition, the PI's public outreach activities include a web site for presenting and explaining this research to a general audience that will include videos of his public lecture series.