10:00 am Zoom (online)
The Journal of Plasma Physics has organized a world-wide colloquium series on topics in the frontiers of plasma physics. This Wed. June 17 at 10 am, Irina Zhuravleva will be giving a talk at 10 am as part of the series.
Irina Zhuravleva, UChicago, "Physics of the hot plasma in galaxy clusters with present and future X-ray observations"
The intracluster medium (ICM) between galaxies in galaxy clusters is in a form of hot, X-ray-emitting plasma, permeated by weak magnetic fields. Although the magnetic fields are energetically subdominant, they modify the transport properties of the plasma, and, thereby, many large-scale phenomena in the ICM: from feedback processes to cluster mergers and subsequent energy flow and heating. The large sizes and relative simplicity of galaxy clusters make them ideal laboratories for measuring fundamental properties of such plasma, which are inaccessible by other means. In this talk, I will review how high-resolution imaging and spectroscopic data from X-ray observations are used to probe turbulence, gas viscosity, and thermal conduction in the ICM. I will present recent constraints on the effective gas viscosity in the bulk intergalactic plasma based on the observed density fluctuations on the Coulomb mean free path scale. At the end of the talk, exciting possibilities to probe plasma physics with near-future XRISM observatory will be discussed.
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