MHD Instabilities and Radio-Mode Feedback in Intracluster Medium

该奖项由2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公共法律111-5)资助。博格达诺维奇博士和雷诺兹博士将进行一系列3-D磁流体动力学模拟，研究射电星系外流如何影响周围气体，并更好地了解磁场在调节星系团中X射线发射气体温度方面的作用。首先，他们将研究在平面平行大气中上升的气泡。他们将在模拟中包括辐射冷却和沿磁场的热传递，以评估这些因素如何影响磁场几何形状和传导热流。模拟整个星系团，他们将检查观察到的气体中的温度结构是否代表了射电喷流吹出星系团气体中的气泡时辐射冷却和加热之间的平衡。最后，博格达诺维奇博士和雷诺兹博士将从宇宙学的角度考虑星系团。他们将研究星系团和搅动气体的星系之间的合并，将如何通过引入额外的湍流和混合来影响气体温度。有针对性的研究将详细检查各种传输过程的影响：各向异性粘度、宇宙射线的扩散和热传导。博格达诺维奇博士是一名职业生涯早期的女科学家。湍流和热传导的热输运对于地面聚变等离子体的研究具有重要意义。每年，博格达诺维奇博士和雷诺兹博士都会招募一名天文学研究生来从事这项研究的某些方面的工作，进行一个简短的项目(博士项目的必备要素)，并招募一名本科生来可视化模拟结果。博格达诺维奇博士和雷诺兹博士将继续就他们的工作发表公开演讲。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Dr Bogdanovic and Dr Reynolds will conduct a series of 3-D magnetohydrodynamic simulations, to study how outflows from radio galaxies affect the surrounding gas, and to better understand the role of magnetic fields in regulating the temperature of the X-ray-emitting gas in galaxy clusters. First, they will study bubbles rising in a plane-parallel atmosphere. They will include both radiative cooling and heat transfer along magnetic fields in their simulations, to assess how these affect the magnetic field geometry and conductive heat flow. Simulating an entire galaxy cluster, they will examine whether the observed temperature structure in the gas might represent a balance between radiative cooling and heating as the radio jet blows bubbles in the cluster gas. Finally, Dr Bogdanovic and Dr Reynolds will consider galaxy clusters in a cosmological setting. They will examine how mergers between clusters, and galaxies stirring the gas, will affect the gas temperature by introducing additional turbulence and mixing. Targeted studies will examine in detail the effect of various transport processes: anisotropic viscosity, the diffusion of cosmic rays, and heat conduction.Dr Bogdanovic is a woman scientist at an early stage of her career. Heat transport by turbulence and thermal conduction is important for studies of terrestrial fusion plasmas. Each year, Dr Bogdanovic and Dr Reynolds will recruit an Astronomy graduate student to work on some aspect of this research for a short project (a required element of the PhD program), and an undergraduate to work on visualizing the results from the simulations. Both Dr Bogdanovic and Dr Reynolds will continue to give public talks on their work.