The Non-thermal Intracluster Medium

WMAP's detection of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect at a much reduced level among several large samples of rich clusters is interpreted in terms of conventional physics. It has been suggested that the central soft X-ray and EUV excess found in some clusters cannot be of thermal origin, due to problems with rapid gas cooling and the persistent non-detection of the O VII line, but may arise from inverse Compton scattering between intracluster relativistic electrons and the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In fact, recent XMM-Newton observations of the soft X-rays from Coma and Abell 3112 are equally well fitted by a power law or a thermal virialized gas. Therefore, the missing Sunyaev-Zel'dovich flux could partly be due to an overestimate of the central density of virialized electrons which scatter the CMB. Synchrotron radiation in an intracluster magnetic field of strength of a few μG is responsible for significant additional electron energy loss. Equipartition between relativistic particle and magnetic field energy densities is a realistic possibility. GHz radiation data from a Coma cluster halo yields information on the high-energy steepening of the cluster relativistic electron spectrum. Cluster microwave emission in the WMAP passbands by higher energy cosmic-ray electrons and gamma-ray emission from an accompanying cosmic-ray proton flux are also considered. The energetic electrons could originate from active galactic nucleus jet injection, then distributed cluster wide by Alfvén wave sweeping, with accompanying in situ Fermi acceleration.