Wenhao Liu

Strong AGN heating provides an alternative means for the disruption of cluster cool cores (CCs) to cluster mergers. In this work we present a systematic Chandra study of a sample of 108 nearby (z < 0.1) galaxy clusters, to investigate the effect of AGN heating on CCs. About 40% of clusters with small offsets between the BCG and the X-ray centre (≤50 kpc) have small CCs. For comparison, 14 of 17 clusters with large offsets have small CCs, which suggests that mergers or sloshing can be efficient in reducing the CC size. Relaxed, small CC clusters generally have weak radio AGNs (⁠|$P_{1.4\rm GHz}−1), and they show a lack of systems hosting a radio AGN with intermediate radio power (⁠|$2\times 10^{23}−1). We found that the strongest circumnuclear (<1 kpc) X-ray emission only exists in clusters with strong radio AGN. The duty cycle of relaxed, small CC clusters is less than half of that for large CC clusters. It suggests that the radio activity of BCGs is affected by the properties of the surrounding gas beyond the central ∼10 kpc, and strong radio AGNs in small X-ray CCs fade more rapidly than those embedded in large X-ray CCs. A scenario is also presented for the transition of large CCs and coronae due to radio AGN feedback. We also present a detailed analysis of galaxy cluster 3C 129.1 as an example of a CC remnant possibly disrupted by radio AGN.

We studied the spectral signature of different components of the Diffuse X-ray Background (DXB), including Local Hot Bubble (LHB), Solar Wind Charge Exchange (SWCX), Galactic Halo, and typically unresolved point sources (galaxies and AGN), in the direction of the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS) using the 4 Ms XMM-Newton survey and Chandra 4 Ms Source Catalog. In this paper, we present our results showing how the different components contribute to the DXB below 1 keV. In particular, we have found that ~6% of the emission at 3/4 keV (all-sky average value ~ 3$\times10^{-3}$ cm$^{-6}$pc), which is typically associated with Galactic Halo (GH) and Circum-galactic medium (CGM) is, in fact, due to emission from typically unresolved galaxies. We will discuss the effect that this has on our understanding of GH and CGM, and to our understanding of the missing CGM baryons.

This work studies the dynamic response of solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) soft X-ray emission in the Earth’s magnetosphere to the solar wind proton flux. Unlike previous studies that attempted to use complex magnetohydrodynamic models to match the details of observed SWCX of a necessarily limited number of cases, this work focuses on determining the changes over individual observations in a much larger sample. To provide the cleanest test, we selected XMM-Newton observations when the solar wind proton flux changed suddenly by a factor greater than 1.5 and calculated the correlation coefficient between the SWCX emission in the 0.5–0.7 keV band and the proton flux. We find that the dynamical response is weak when the solar wind proton flux is low (<10,000 n*km/cc/s) because its variation is smaller than the uncertainty due to other emission components, but this response increases with the proton flux and its change value. The response is improved when the valence state of solar wind ions is high, as a higher abundance of ions generating SWCX can produce a greater correlation even though the proton flux is relatively low. It is conducive to the study of interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) because ions in ICMEs are usually highly ionized. For XMM-Newton, the 0.5–0.7 keV band shows the strongest correlation, as the instrumental response decreases at lower energies and the SWCX emission decreases at higher energies. Moreover, the closer the satellite line of sight is to the subsolar magnetopause with the strongest SWCX emissivity, the better the correlation.

We studied the spectral signature of different components of the diffuse X-ray background (DXB), including Local Hot Bubble, solar wind charge exchange, galactic halo, and typically unresolved point sources (galaxies and active galactic nuclei), in the direction of the Chandra Deep Field South using the 4 Ms XMM-Newton survey and Chandra 4 Ms Source Catalog. In this paper, we present our results showing how the different components contribute to the DXB below 1 keV. In particular, we have found that ∼6% of the emission at 3 4 keV (all-sky average value ≈3 × 10⁻³ cm⁻⁶ pc), which is typically associated with galactic halo (GH) and circumgalactic medium (CGM), is, in fact, due to emission from typically unresolved galaxies. We will discuss the effect that this has on our understanding of GH and CGM and to our understanding of the missing CGM baryons.

With the advent of soft X-ray imaging enabling global magnetopause detection, it is critical to use reconstruction techniques to derive the 3-dimensional magnetopause location from 2-dimensional X-ray images. One of the important assumptions adopted by most techniques is that the direction with maximum soft X-ray emission is the tangent direction of the magnetopause, which has not been validated in observation so far. This paper analyzes a magnetospheric solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) soft X-ray event detected by XMM–Newton during relatively stable solar wind and geomagnetic conditions. The tangent direction of the magnetopause is determined by an empirical magnetopause model. Observation results show that the maximum SWCX soft X-ray intensity gradient tends to be the tangent of the magnetopause’s inner boundary, while the maximum SWCX soft X-ray intensity tends to be the tangent of the magnetopause’s outer boundary. Therefore, it is credible to use the assumption that the tangent direction of the magnetopause is the maximum SWCX soft X-ray intensity or its gradient when reconstructing the 3-dimensional magnetopause location. In addition, since these two maxima tend to be the inner and outer boundaries of the magnetopause, the thickness of magnetopause can also be revealed by soft X-ray imaging.

Soft X-ray emissions from solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) are applied in a recently developed approach to study the magnetosphere using panoramic soft X-ray imaging. This study represents the first attempt to distinguish magnetospheric SWCX emissions observed by XMM-Newton during the impact of an interplanetary coronal mass ejection (ICME) and its driven sheath on Earth. In addition, data from the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) were available during this same observational period, which is rare in previous studies. Results showed that SWCX emissions peaked during the ICME at approximately 2.3 times the mean of the observation period, although the solar wind flux decreased to a much lower level. A comparison of spectral results with ion data probed by ACE revealed that high ionization states in the ICME effectively enhanced line emission intensity for heavy ions (e.g., Ne, Mg, and Al). Thus, despite a low proton flux, elevated high-valence ion abundance in the ICME favors magnetospheric soft X-ray observations. Furthermore, the fitted X-ray flux of ion line emissions was consistent with elemental abundance ratios determined in situ by ACE, particularly for C⁵⁺, C⁶⁺, Ne⁹⁺, Mg¹¹⁺, and Mg¹²⁺. This confirms the viability of spectral diagnosis of SWCX emissions as a new method for remotely analyzing high-state ion distributions in solar wind. A time-correlated or two-stage efficiency factor is further suggested to better estimate X-ray intensity during an ICME impact, which was ∼1.7 times higher in the ICME than in the sheath.