Simulating the Galaxy Cluster “El Gordo”: Gas Motion, Kinetic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Signal, and X-Ray Line Features

The massive galaxy cluster “El Gordo” (ACT-CL J0102-4915) is a rare merging system with a high collision speed suggested by multi-wavelength observations and theoretical modeling. Zhang et al. propose two types of mergers, a nearly head-on merger and an off-axis merger with a large impact parameter, to reproduce most of the observational features of the cluster using numerical simulations. The different merger configurations of the two models result in different gas motion in the simulated clusters. In this paper, we predict the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (kSZ) effect, the relativistic correction of the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (tSZ) effect, and the X-ray spectrum of this cluster, based on the two proposed models. We find that (1) the amplitudes of the kSZ effect resulting from the two models are both on the order of ΔT/T ∼ 10^-5 but their morphologies are different, which trace the different line-of-sight velocity distributions of the systems; (2) the relativistic correction of the tSZ effect around 240 GHz can be possibly used to constrain the temperature of the hot electrons heated by the shocks; and (3) the shift between the X-ray spectral lines emitted from different regions of the cluster can be significantly different in the two models. The shift and the line broadening can be up to ∼25 eV and 50 eV, respectively. We expect that future observations of the kSZ effect and the X-ray spectral lines (e.g., by ALMA, XARM) will provide a strong constraint on the gas motion and the merger configuration of ACT-CL J0102-4915.