2020/10/05 by Kyle Finner, Kim HyeongHan, M. James Jee +8 · 1 voice
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ac0d00
21 pages, 12 figures, Submitted to ApJ
arxiv published 2020/10/05 · arxiv created 2021/10/11 · arxiv updated 2021/10/13
The investigation of merging galaxy clusters that exhibit radio relics is strengthening our understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxy clusters, the nature of dark matter, the intracluster medium, and astrophysical particle acceleration. Each merging cluster provides only a single view of the cluster formation process and the variety of merging clusters is vast. Clusters hosting double radio relics are rare and extremely important because they allow tight constraints on the merger scenario. We present a weak-lensing and X-ray analysis of MACSJ1752.0+4440 (z=0.365) and ZWCL1856.8+6616 (z=0.304), two double radio relic clusters. Our weak-lensing mass estimates show that each cluster is a major merger with approximately 1:1 mass ratio. The total mass of MACSJ1752.0+4440 (ZWCL1856.8+6616) is M200=14.7+3.8-3.3×1014 M_\odot (M200=2.4+0.9-0.7×1014 M_\odot). We find that these two clusters have comparable features in their weak-lensing and gas distributions, even though the systems have vastly different total masses. From the likeness of the X-ray morphologies and the remarkable symmetry of the radio relics, we propose that both systems underwent nearly head-on collisions. However, revelations from the hot-gas features and our multiwavelength data analysis suggest that ZWCL1856.8+6618 is likely at a later merger phase than MACSJ1752.0+4440. We postulate that the SW radio relic in MACSJ1752.0+4440 is a result of particle re-acceleration.