Speaker
Description
Galaxy clusters are the most massive reservoirs of X-ray emitting hot gas and the latter constitutes the largest fraction of the volume filling baryons in the intracluster medium. Observations indicate that the ICM does not cool as efficiently as predicted in the theory including pure radiative cooling. Combining radio, X-ray and H$\alpha$ observations, it is now well known that the central black hole is injecting a copious amount of energy in clusters to maintain a rough global thermal balance at low redshifts. Using results from theory and idealized numerical simulations, I will discuss how locally thermally unstable ICM becomes multiphase (temperature ranges:$10^4 - 10^7$ K). I will also discuss how the radial extent of the entropy core in the hot gas may modify the nature of multiphase condensation. Although the metallicity is broadly uniform in clusters across $\sim 100$s of kpc and redshifts, I will conclude my talk with a discussion on whether local metallicity fluctuations may affect multiphase condensation or not.
