A Chandra Study of Temperature Substructures in Intermediate-Redshift
  Galaxy Clusters
  By analyzing the gas temperature maps created from the Chandra archive data,
we reveal the prevailing existence of temperature substructures on ~100 kpc
scales in the central regions of nine intermediate-redshift (z~0.1) galaxy
clusters, which resemble those found in the Virgo and Coma Clusters. Each
substructure contains a clump of hot plasma whose temperature is about 2-3 keV
higher than the environment, corresponding to an excess thermal energy of
~1E58-1E60 erg per clump. Since if there were no significant non-gravitational
heating sources, these substructures would have perished in 1E8-1E9 yrs due to
thermal conduction and turbulent flows, whose velocity is found to range from
about 200 to 400 km/s, we conclude that the substructures cannot be created and
sustained by inhomogeneous radiative cooling. We also eliminate the
possibilities that the temperature substructures are caused by supernova
explosions, or by the non-thermal X-ray emission due to the
inverse-Comptonization of the CMB photons. By calculating the rising time of
AGN-induced buoyant bubbles, we speculate that the intermittent AGN outbursts
(~ 1E60 erg per burst) may have played a crucial role in the forming of the
high temperature substructures. Our results are supported by recent study of
McNamara & Nulsen (2007), posing a tight observational constraint on future
theoretical and numerical studies.
