Tuesday

Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound objects in the universe, and mergers between them are consequently the most energetic events. The bulk of the baryons in galaxy clusters are in the form of a hot, diffuse, and weakly magnetized plasma known as the intracluster medium. Though the magnetic field is dynamically weak in most cases, the larmor radii of the electrons and ions in the intracluster medium are many orders of magnitude smaller than their mean free paths, implying that transprort processes are highly anisotropic. Additionally, high-energy and non-thermal cosmic-ray particles also permeate clusters, which interact with the the intracluster medium and its magnetic field in a number of complex ways. During a galaxy cluster merger, gas motions enhance these effects and produce observable consequences in the X-ray and radio bands. In this talk, I will describe how we are using MHD simulations of galaxy cluster mergers to explore the different effects of transport processes and the interaction of cosmic-ray electrons with the intracluster medium, and compare the simulations to real data using mock observations.