Search for gas bulk motions in eight nearby clusters of galaxies with Suzaku

Abstract

To search for bulk motions of the intracluster medium, we analyzed X-ray spectra taken with the Suzaku satellite, and measured the Doppler shift of the Fe-K line emission from eight nearby clusters of galaxies with various X-ray morphologies. In the cores of the Centaurus and Perseus clusters, the gas bulk velocity does not exceed the sound velocity, which confirms the results of previous researchs. For the Cen 45 subcluster, we found that the radial velocity relative to the Centaurus core, <780 km s-1, is significantly smaller than that reported in the optical band at the 3.9 σ level, which suggests an offset between the gas and galaxy distributions along the line of sight due to the subcluster merger. In A 2199, A 2142, A 3667, and A 133, no significant bulk motion was detected, indicating an upper limit on the radial velocity of 3000-4000 km s-1. A sign of large bulk velocity in excess of the instrumental calibration uncertainty was found near the center of the cool-core cluster A 2029 and in a subcluster of the merging cluster A 2255, suggesting that the nonthermal pressure support is not negligible in estimating the total gravitational mass of not only merging clusters, but also relaxed clusters, as predicted by numerical simulations. To improve the significance of the detection, however, a further examination by follow-up observations is required. The present study provides a pilot survey prior to future high-resolution spectroscopy with ASTRO-H, which is expected to play a critical role in revealing the dynamical evolutions of clusters.