Gas Stripping, Turbulence, and Wake Formation in Cluster Mergers

We present results from high-resolution (sub-kpc) hydro + dark matter simulations of the interaction of subclusters with the intracluster medium during the initial stages of a galaxy cluster merger. Using the adaptive-mesh code FLASH, we study the development of fluid instabilities along the contact surface and in the wake produced by this interaction. We examine the role of shock waves and instability-induced turbulence in the stripping of gas from the dense subcluster core. We discuss the observability of merger-induced turbulence, and we compare our results to the observed clusters Abell 85 and Abell 3667. This research has been supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under grant no. B341495 to the ASCI Flash Center at the University of Chicago.