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Supersonic Motions of Galaxies in Clusters

We study motions of galaxies in galaxy clusters formed in the concordance LCDM cosmology. We use high-resolution cosmological simulations that follow dynamics of dark matter and gas and include various physical processes critical for galaxy formation: gas cooling, heating and star formation. Analysing motions of galaxies and the properties of intracluster gas in the sample of eight simulated clusters at z=0, we study velocity dispersion profiles of the dark matter, gas, and galaxies. We measure the mean velocity of galaxy motions and gas sound speed as a function of radius and calculate the average Mach number of galaxy motions. The simulations show that galaxies, on average, move supersonically with the average Mach number of ~1.4, approximately independent of the cluster-centric radius. The supersonic motions of galaxies may potentially provide an important source of heating for the intracluster gas by driving weak shocks and via dynamical friction, although these heating processes appear to be inefficient in our simulations. We also find that galaxies move faster than the dark matter particles in clusters. The magnitude of the velocity bias, b_v~1.1, is, however, smaller than the bias estimated for subhalos in dissipationless simulations. Interestingly, we find velocity bias in the tangential component of the velocity dispersion, but not in the radial component. Finally, we find significant random bulk motions of gas. The typical gas velocities are of order ~20-30% of the gas sound speed. These random motions provide about 10% of the total pressure support in our simulated clusters. The non-thermal pressure support, if neglected, will bias measurements of the total mass in the hydrostatic analyses of the X-ray cluster observations.