2010 Abstracts

Predicting radio halo statistics and properties with large-scale simulation

Paul Sutter, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

We present a first estimate based on a cosmological gasdynamics simulation of galaxy cluster radio halo counts to be expected in forthcoming low-frequency radio surveys. Our estimate is based on a FLASH simulation of the LCDM model for which we have generated mock radio sky maps by using the observed X-ray-radio correlation for clusters to normalize projections of the turbulent gas pressure . Under the assumption that acceleration of the cosmic rays responsible for radio halos takes place due to intracluster turbulence, the radio surface brightness distribution should trace this quantity. Appropriate observational scatter and cold-core corrections are included.

Abstract Author(s): P.M. Sutter, P.M. Ricker, and H.-Y. Yang