Dust in Clusters of Galaxies

Abstract

The presence of dust in the intracluster medium (ICM) has been a long-standing problem that is still awaiting elucidation. Direct observational diagnostics are rather challenging (though not impossible) either because of a sparse distribution of dust in the intracluster space that makes extinction measurements difficult or because of a low surface brightness of infrared emission from dust. Complex indirect approaches are currently available that can overcome uncertainties and provide a reasonable understanding of the basic regulations of the physical state of dust in the ICM. Contrary to the common opinion that the hot ICM does not allow dust to survive and manifest, many sparse observational data either directly point out that dust exists in the intracluster space or its presence is consistent with the data. Highly divergent data in direct evidence and highly uncertain indirect indicators are often connected either with dust fragility in a hot environment, the possible compactness of spatial (clumpy) dust distribution in the ICM, or dynamical features of dust transport. The source of dust is obviously connected with galaxies, and it turns out that in most cases, dust is carried from galaxies into the ICM while being thermally and dynamically shielded against the hostile influence of high-energy ions. In this review, we briefly discuss related issues from observational and theoretical points of view, including the transport of dust into the ICM, and the associated destructive and protective mechanisms and their characteristic time scales.

From Clusters to Proto-Clusters: The Infrared Perspective on Environmental Galaxy Evolution

“…Here we give a brief overview of ICD in the context of infrared studies. For an in-depth review of ICD, we refer the reader to Shchekinov et al [750]. We discuss the second component, cluster galaxies, in the next section.…”

Tracking Dusty Cloud Crushed by a Hot Flow

“…The destruction of dusty clouds interacting with a hot flow is closely related to the accurate interpretation of the extinction measurements in the ICM. The large scatter of the extinction values can be connected not only with observational uncertainties (e.g., see [18,50] for a review), but also with erroneous conclusions about the destruction of dusty clouds moving in the hot gas.…”

“…It is clear that the transport of unshielded dust particles over such long distances in a hot environment in a CGM is accompanied by the destruction of the grains via thermal or kinetic sputtering [17]. Therefore, it is usually assumed that such transport is carried out via the expelling of dense and cold gas clouds and clumps containing dust (for a more recent discussion, see review [18]).…”

“…It is known that naked (unshielded) dust particles are destroyed in a rather dense (n > 10 −3 cm −3 ) and hot (T > 10 6 K) environment in a CGM and in an ICM gas while traveling on timescales close to the crossing times typical for a CGM and ICM [18,24]. Usually, dust expelled out of galaxies is supposed to be confined into denser gas clouds.…”

Observed dust surface density across cosmic times

“…A fraction of metals in the interstellar medium of galaxies in both the local and high-redshift Universe resides in microscopic solid particles or dust grains (Field 1974;Savage & Sembach 1996;Jenkins 2009a;De Cia et al 2016). Interstellar dust has manifold impact on the physics and chemistry of the interstellar medium (Zhukovska et al 2016(Zhukovska et al , 2018Galliano 2022) as well as the intra-cluster medium (Shchekinov et al 2022). Because dust locks some elements away from the gas phase, it affects our measurements of the metallicity of galaxies.…”