A Heating Mechanism via Magnetic Pumping in the Intracluster Medium

Understand

Turbulence driven by AGN activity, cluster mergers and galaxy motion constitutes an attractive energy source for heating the intracluster medium (ICM).

• How this energy dissipates into the ICM plasma remains unclear, given its low collisionality and high magnetization (precluding viscous heating by Coulomb processes).
• Kunz et al.
• 2011 proposed a viable heating mechanism based on the anisotropy of the plasma pressure (gyroviscous heating) under ICM conditions.