Paper detail

How To Light It Up: Simulating Ram-Pressure Stripped X-ray Bright Tails

Some tails of ram-pressure stripped galaxies are detected in HI, some in Halpha, and some in X-ray (but never all three so far). We use numerical simulations to probe the conditions for the production of X-ray bright tails, demonstrating that the primary requirement is a high pressure intracluster medium (ICM). This is because the stripped tail is mostly in pressure equilibrium with the ICM, but mixing leaves it with densities and temperatures intermediate between the cold gas in the disk and the hot ICM. Given a high enough ICM pressure, this mixed gas lies in the X-ray bright region of the phase diagram. We compare the simulations to observations of the ram pressure stripped tail of ESO 137-001, showing excellent agreement in the total measured X-ray and Halpha emission and non-flaring morphology of the tail, and consistent HI measurements. Using these comparisons we constrain the level of mixing and efficiency of heat conduction in the intracluster medium (ICM)