ZWCL 1856.8: A Rare Double Radio Relic System Captured within NuSTAR and Chandra Field of View

Abstract

Observations of galaxy cluster mergers provide insights on the particle acceleration and heating mechanisms taking place within the intracluster medium. Mergers form shocks that propagate through the plasma, which result in shock/cold fronts in the X-ray, and radio halos and/or relics in the radio regime. The connection between these tracers and the mechanisms driving non-thermal processes, such as inverse Compton, are not well understood. ZWCL 1856.8 is one of the few known double radio relic systems that originate from nearly head-on collisions observed close to the plane of the sky. For the first time, we study NuSTAR and Chandra observations of this system, which contains both relics within their field of view. The spectro-imaging analyses results of the system suggest weak shock fronts with ${ \mathcal M }$ numbers within 2 σ of the radio-derived values, and provide evidence of inverse Compton emission at both relic sites. Our findings have great uncertainties due to the shallow exposure times available. Deeper NuSTAR and Chandra data are crucial for studying the connection of the radio and X-ray emission features and for constraining the thermal versus non-thermal emission contributions in this system. We also present methods and approaches on how to investigate X-ray properties of double relic systems by taking full advantage of the complementary properties of NuSTAR and Chandra missions.

Keywords

• Galaxy clusters
• High energy astrophysics
• Non-thermal radiation sources
• Shocks