Investigating Abundances in Galaxy Clusters and Gas Motions in M87 using XRISM

Abstract

Galaxy clusters are the forefront of extragalactic diffuse X-ray astrophysics, yet there are still many questions about their formation and evolution. The creation of XRISM, a new X-ray imaging and spectroscopy mission, will study the metal abundance history of clusters and the conversion of jet energy into atmospheric kinetic energy. XRISM’s payload contains an instrument with the highest spectral resolution (5 eV) in the field of X-ray astronomy so far. With this resolution, we observed metal abundances and the broadening of metal lines through turbulent motions in the intracluster medium.

In this thesis I present the conversion of data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory to XRISM’s high-resolution format. This includes the preparation and selection of clusters in Chandra, simulating selected clusters for XRISM and applying for proposals. Finally, we extracted abundance and velocity information from the Virgo cluster’s early XRISM data.