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# High-precision measurement of the half-life of 62Ga

## I Introduction

The Fermi coupling constant $`G_v`$ is most precisely determined from the nuclear $`\beta `$ decay of nine isotopes ranging from 10C to 54Co . The $`0^+`$ to $`0^+`$ Fermi decays of these isotopes allow to determine a corrected $`Ft`$ value from the ft values of the individual isotopes and thus the coupling constant $`G_v`$ by means of the relation

$$Ft=ft(1+\delta _R^{^{}})(1+\delta _{NS}\delta _C)=\frac{k}{2G_v(1+\mathrm{\Delta }_R^v)}.$$
(1)
$`f`$ is the statistical rate function which strongly depends on the decay Q value for $`\beta `$ decay and $`t`$ is the partial half-life of the superallowed $`\beta `$-decay branch. $`\delta _R^{^{}}`$, $`\delta _{NS}`$ and $`\delta _C`$ are the nucleus dependent part of the radiative correction, the nuclear structure dependent radiative correction, and the isospin-symmetry breaking correction, respectively. $`k`$ is a constant ($`k/(\mathrm{}c)^6=(8120.271\pm 0.012)\times 10^{10}GeV^4s`$) and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_R^v`$ is the transition independent part of the radiative corrections.

The corrected $`Ft`$ values allow to test the conserved vector current (CVC) hypothesis of the weak interaction. This hypothesis together with the nine most precisely measured $`0^+0^+`$ transitions mentioned above yield an average $`Ft`$ value of 3072.2(8) s .

The coupling constant $`G_v`$ together with the coupling constant for muon decay allows to determine the $`V_{ud}`$ matrix element of the Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) quark mixing matrix, which in turn can be used to study the unitarity of the CKM matrix. This question has attracted much interest in recent years, as there were indications that the top row of the CKM matrix is not unitary at the 2.2 $`\sigma `$ level . Recent new measurements  seem to indicate that the accepted value of $`V_{us}`$ might be too low. The new value of $`V_{us}`$, if confirmed, would restore unitarity of the first row of the CKM matrix (0.9999(16) instead of 0.9968(14) before). A deviation from unitarity would have far reaching consequences for the standard model of the weak interaction and would point to physics beyond the currently accepted model.

Before the existence of physics beyond the standard model can be advocated, the different inputs into the determination of the corrected $`Ft`$ value which leads to the calculation of the CKM matrix element should be carefully checked. It has turned out that the main uncertainty for the value of the $`V_{ud}`$ matrix element comes from theoretical uncertainties linked to the different correction factors. The correction which attracted mainly the attention is the isospin-symmetry breaking correction $`\delta _C`$, which is strongly nuclear-model dependent . Model calculations predict this correction to become increasingly important for heavier N=Z, odd-odd nuclei. Measurements with these heavier nuclei should therefore allow to more reliably test this correction.

The aim of the work presented here is to determine with high precision the half-life of 62Ga which is one experimental input to determine the corrected $`Ft`$ value for this nucleus. This measurement is part of our efforts which include also a measurement of the $`\beta `$-decay branching ratios for 62Ga and improvements to the Canadian Penning Trap (CPT) mass spectrometer to measure the mass of 62Ga and of its $`\beta `$-decay daughter 62Zn .

The half-life of 62Ga has been measured several times previously. Alburger  determined a value of 115.95(30) ms, Chiba et al.  obtained a less precise value of 116.4(15) ms, Davids et al.  reported a value of 116.34(35) ms, and Hyman et al.  recently published a half-life of 115.84(25) ms. These data yield a mean value of 116.00(17) ms. This half-life does not yet reach the required precision of better than $`10^3`$ in order to include 62Ga in the CVC test and the determination of the CKM matrix element. In the present paper, we report on a measurement which achieves the necessary precision.

## II Experimental technique

The experiment was performed at the GSI on-line mass separator. A 40Ca beam with an energy of 4.8 A MeV and an average intensity of 50 particle-nA impinged on a niobium degrader foil of thickness 2.7 mg/cm2 installed in front of the silicon target of thickness 2.40 mg/cm2. The niobium degrader decreased the energy of the primary beam to obtain the highest yield for the 28Si(40Ca,$`\alpha `$pn)62Ga reaction. The beam intensity was controlled in regular time intervals by inserting a Faraday cup upstream of the degrader-target array. A Febiad-E2 source was used to produce a low-energy 62Ga beam which was then mass analysed by the GSI on-line mass separator and delivered to the measuring station. The activity was accumulated on a moving tape device for 350 ms and then moved into the detection setup (transport time about 100 ms). After a delay of 10 ms, the half-life measurement was started. Measurement times of 1600 ms and 1800 ms were used. During the measurement, the beam was deflected well ahead of the collection point. After about 2.2 s, a new cycle started with a new accumulation.

The detection setup consisted of a 4$`\pi `$ gas detector used to detect $`\beta `$ particles and a germanium detector for $`\gamma `$ rays. The $`\beta `$ detector consists of two single-wire gas counters used in saturation regime and operated with P10 gas slightly above atmospheric pressure. The moving tape transporting the activity passed through a slit between the two detectors. Thin aluminised mylar entrance windows allowed to detect low-energy $`\beta `$ particles. The detectors were carefully tested before the experiment in order to establish their operation curves and to measure their efficiencies. With a 90Sr source we determined an operation plateau between 1450 V and 1900 V and a detection efficiency of about 90%. During the experiment, we used different high voltage values within this plateau. The detector volume was about 5 cm3 for each detector. The counting rate was found to be independent of the gas flow and a gas flow of about 0.15 $`l/min`$ was used throughout the experiment.

The germanium detector was mounted at a distance of about 4 cm from the source point. It had a photopeak efficiency of 0.8% at 1 MeV. Two $`\gamma `$-ray spectra were accumulated in a multi-channel analyser in parallel during the run: i) one spectrum which required a $`\beta `$ coincidence from the gas detector and ii) one spectrum where the germanium detector was running without any coincidence.

The electronics chain for the $`\beta `$ detector was as follows: The output signal of the two detectors and a pulser signal were fed into one preamplifier (Canberra 2004). The detectors were biased by a Tennelec HV power-supply (TC952A). The preamplifier output was connected to an ORTEC timing-filter amplifier (TFA454) with integration and differentiation times of 100 ns and 20 ns, respectively. The TFA output was fed into a LeCroy octal discriminator (623B). In order to search for systematic effects in our data, we modified the threshold during the experiment as described below. The output of the discriminator was split at the entrance of two LeCroy Dual Gate Generators which defined the non-extendable dead-times of 3 $`\mu `$s and 5 $`\mu `$s, respectively. The output signal of the two gate generators were finally passed through a gate generator (GSI GG8000) and a level adapter (GSI LA8010) to adjust the signal length and type for the clock (GSI TD1000) which was started at the beginning of each cycle and which time-stamped each event on a 2 ms/channel basis with 1000 channels. The time stamps were then stored in a memory register (GSI MR2000). During the tape transport, the memory registers were read out, written to tape, and erased for a new cycle.

The clock modules were carefully tested and selected before the experiment. Measurements of their precision and stability have been carried out with respect to a Stanford Research Systems high precision pulse generator (DS345). Tests have been performed at different counting rates (100 kHz to 900 kHz) and with different times per channel (0.5 ms to 20 ms). The modules used had a timing precision of better than 2$`\times `$10-6.

The background counting rate was checked before the experiment under experimental conditions. We measured a counting rate of 1.7 counts per second. The average background determined in the half-life fits was about a factor of two higher (see below).

## III Half-life measurements

In this section, we will first discuss the results obtained for a reference set of analysis parameters which yields the final half-life value. In the second part, we will test how different analysis parameters may affect the half-life results. In the third part, we will investigate whether the data are subject to any systematic error. For this purpose, we varied different experimental parameters. Finally, the influence of different possible contaminants will be discussed.

### A Analysis with reference parameters

The data stored cycle-by-cycle have been analysed off-line with a program package adapted from programs developped at Chalk River . This package includes a program to select cycles according to user defined criteria. The selection criteria are the number of counts in the spectrum for a given cycle and the $`\chi ^2`$ value of a least-square fit of a user defined function (see below) to the data. For a typical high-statistics run (e.g. run 10), about 10% of the original data has been rejected due to low statistics, whereas less than 1% of the data did not satisfy our fit quality criterium, i.e. either the fit did not converge after 500 iterations or we obtained a too poor $`\chi ^2`$ value. Therefore, if one excludes low-statistics cycles, at maximum 1% of the cycles were rejected. We do not expect that such a low rejection rate will bias our final result.

The fitting procedure is taken from a text book . The first condition rejects cycles where e.g. the primary beam was off or where other technical problems reduced the counting rate significantly. The second condition reject cycles with gas-detector sparks. The reference conditions for this selection are a cutoff limit of 20 counts per cycle and a reduced $`\chi ^2`$ value of 2 for the cycle fits. The fit was performed by assuming a one-component exponential and a long-lived fixed background, the latter being determined by an iterative procedure separately for each run. Variations of these parameters are discussed below.

For selected cycles, the program generates a simulated data set for which all characteristics but the half-life are determined by the experimental cycle. These simulated data are then subjected to a pre-defined dead-time and stored cycle-by-cycle on disk. We used a half-life of 116.40 ms in the simulations.

The second step in the analysis procedure is a correction cycle-by-cycle of the dead-time. This is achieved by a correction of each channel with a factor of $`f_{dt}=1/(1+t_{dt}R)`$, where $`t_{dt}`$ is the non-extendable dead-time per event (3$`\mu `$s or 5$`\mu `$s) and $`R`$ is the counting rate (1/s) determined from the channel content. After dead-time correction, all selected cycles are summed to yield the decay-time spectrum of a given run. 39 different runs with run times as long as 4 h at maximum and varying experimental conditions (high voltage of the gas detector, CFD threshold, cycle time, transport tape) were accumulated. In total, about 38$`\times `$106 62Ga decays have been detected.

In figure 1a, we show the experimental spectrum of one run corrected for dead-time. The fit of this particular run which lasted about 4h yielded a half-life of 116.22(16) ms. Part b of the figure shows the simulated spectrum. Here a half-life of 116.55(16) ms resulted.

Similar results were obtained for the other runs. Figure 2a shows the half-life determined for each of the 39 runs for the data set with a dead-time of 5 $`\mu `$s. The fits of the individual runs were performed with a decay component for 62Ga and a constant background. The error-weighted average of the half-life is 116.18(3) ms. These data have been analysed with the reference conditions defined above. The reduced $`\chi ^2`$ value of the averaging fit is 1.60.

Figure 2b shows the reduced $`\chi ^2`$ value of the fits of the individual runs. In general, the values are below 1.1. Two runs are at a reduced $`\chi ^2`$ value of about 1.13 and two more above 1.2. These high $`\chi ^2`$ values indicate a rather low probability (below 0.1%) for the fitted distribution being the true distribution. We analysed these runs very carefully by e.g. cutting them in up to four ”sub-runs” to see whether there is any indication of increased detector sparking or any other experimental problem. As we did not find any difference between these runs and those with lower $`\chi ^2`$ values, we assume that these high values are a result of the tails of the probability distribution of $`\chi ^2`$. Removal of these runs would not have changed the final result by any means.

In figures 2c,d, we plot the same information for the simulated data. The average value for the half-life is 116.41(3) ms in agreement with the input value of 116.40 ms. Most of the reduced $`\chi ^2`$ values are close to unity, but there are again runs with higher values from the tails of the $`\chi ^2`$ probability distribution. The fact that the half-life result for the simulated data corresponds to the input half-life shows that the dead-time correction is done correctly. An omission of the dead-time correction for the 5$`\mu `$s data would yield a half-life that is longer by about 0.15 ms.

The data with a fixed dead-time of 3$`\mu `$s were analysed in a similar way, including again a comparison with simulations. The results are in perfect agreement with the 5$`\mu `$s data set. In figure 3, we show the half-life values for the individual runs as deduced from this data set. The average value is 116.18(3) ms. The reduced $`\chi ^2`$ distribution is very similar to the one of the first data set. The fact that we obtain the same results for the two data sets with different dead-time values indicates again that the dead-time correction in the data analysis is handled properly.

Another way to track down possible problems with the dead-time correction is to fit the experimental and simulated data for different parts of the spectra. This uses the fact that the data at the beginning of the cycle are, due to the higher counting rate, more strongly influenced by the dead-time than the data later in the cycle. In figure 4, we present this analysis of the data for the two data sets, experiment and simulations. The half-life shows indeed very little variation as a function of the starting point of the fit and the half-lives obtained vary around the value obtained when the whole spectrum is fitted.

### B Influence of analysis parameters

The selection of cycles can be performed with different parameter values. This selection may influence the final result considerably. We therefore tested the different selection criteria extensively.

The most important selection parameter is the $`\chi ^2`$ value of the fit of the individual cycles. We performed tests with reduced $`\chi ^2`$ limits of 1.5, 2, 5, 20, 2000, and 20000. The reduced $`\chi ^2`$ value of the cycle fits has to be equal to or smaller than the chosen $`\chi ^2`$ value to be taken into account for further analysis. No significant change of the half-life obtained was observed for values of 2 and higher. However, a too tight limit on $`\chi ^2`$ yields longer half-lives. A reduced $`\chi ^2`$ limit of 1.5 in the cycle selection yields a half-life about 0.2% longer than for higher values.

The use of a reduced $`\chi ^2`$ value higher than two does not alter the resulting final half-life, however, the $`\chi ^2`$ value of the individual runs increases significantly with increasing $`\chi ^2`$ limit, as less and less detector sparks are eliminated. We finally chose a reduced $`\chi ^2`$ value of 2 to efficiently remove cycles with detector sparks.

An additional selection parameter is the number of counts for a cycle. We varied this parameter but could not find any systematic behaviour as a function of its value. The final analysis was performed with a value of 20. This removes basically all cycles with low activity.

As mentioned above, the cycle selection was performed by fitting with only one decay component and a fixed constant background. The fixed constant background option was chosen to avoid negative background fit values that may occur due to the very low statistics per cycle. The fixed background was determined iteratively for each run individually. This procedure converged after only two or three iterations. We performed also analyses with background values different from those determined by the iterative procedure. It turned out that slightly different half-lives were obtained only when reduced $`\chi ^2`$ values smaller than two were used.

To test the fitting procedure, we performed also fits of our data with the MINUIT  fit package. These fits performed for individual runs as well as for a sum spectrum of all runs yield, after dead-time correction, precisely the same results as the least-square procedure from a text book  used in the main analysis.

### C Search for systematic effects due to experimental conditions

During the experiment, certain experimental parameters were changed to study their influence on the half-life determined. For this purpose, we used two different values for the CFD threshold which triggered the decay events. Runs up to run number 17 were performed with a threshold value of -0.3 V. For the 5$`\mu `$s data, these runs give an average half-life of 116.26(6) ms. The runs from number 18 on used a slightly different value of -0.35 V. Here the average half-life is 116.14(4) ms. For the 3$`\mu `$s data, similar values were obtained. These values agree with each other at the 1.4 $`\sigma `$ level.

Another parameter changed periodically during the data taking is the detector high-voltage. The values used varied between 1600 V and 1650 V. In figure 2a,b, the runs with different high-voltage values are shown by different symbols. No systematic effect was observed. The average half-lives determined are 116.28(7) ms, 116.10(6) ms, 116.21(5) ms, and 116.00(24) ms for the high-voltage values of 1600 V, 1615 V, 1625 V, and 1650 V, respectively. The results for the 3$`\mu `$s data set is in agreement with the 5$`\mu `$s data.

Runs 1-14 were performed with a decay time of 1600 ms, whereas a decay time of 1800 ms was used for the rest of the runs. This change did not induce any observable systematic effect. Finally the transport tape was changed after run 14 to ensure that long-lived activities do not alter the results. No effect was observed.

Within the tests performed our data are not subject to any experimental bias. We therefore do not correct our data for systematic errors due to experimental parameters.

### D Search for contaminants

Contaminants which are produced in the same reaction and transported in the same way as 62Ga may alter the observed half-life significantly. In general, their half-life is different from the half-life of 62Ga and their influence has to be studied carefully.

In an isobaric chain separated by a mass separator, the half-lives change significantly from one isotope to the other. As the less exotic isotopes have normally longer half-lives and are usually produced with much higher cross sections, an isobaric contamination not corrected for properly yields longer half-lives.

Our data are possibly subject to different kinds of contamination:

* As the mass separation is not perfect, isotopes with masses A=61 or A=63 might contaminate our data. However, at the GSI on-line separator neighboring masses are suppressed by a factor of the order of $`10^4`$ which does not take differences in production cross-section and half-life into account. This high selectivity is confirmed by the fact that no $`\gamma `$ rays from mass 61 or 63 isotopes were observed in the $`\beta `$-particle gated $`\gamma `$ spectra which yields a suppression factor well above 104.
* 62Zn ($`T_{1/2}`$=9.2h) is produced i) directly in the ion source of the mass separator and transported to the collection point and ii) by the decay of 62Ga. However, due to its low $`Q_{EC}`$ value of 1627 keV, 62Zn decays mainly by electron capture. As the half-life of 62Ga was determined by measuring the time characteristics of $`\beta `$ particles, 62Zn is not expected to alter the half-life value of 62Ga. In addition, its half-life is very long compared to that of 62Ga so that its contribution is in the worst case expected to yield a constant background. These findings are confirmed by the absense of $`\gamma `$ rays from the decay of 62Zn in the $`\beta `$-gated $`\gamma `$ spectrum.
* 62Cu ($`T_{1/2}`$=9.7 min) is certainly the most important contaminant because its half-life is short enough to be a concern. It is either produced directly in the ion source of the mass separator and implanted as a mass-separated beam or produced in the decay of the 62Zn activity collected on the tape. The latter contribution can safely be discarded, as it is governed by the 62Zn half-life which is very long.

To determine the influence of 62Cu produced in the mass separator source and collected together with 62Ga, we attempted to fit the time distributions for the individual runs as well as for the sum of all runs by adding a second exponential with the time constant of 62Cu to the fit function. However, the fit reduces this contribution to a value in agreement with zero. If we impose a 62Cu contribution by fixing the amount of 62Cu, the fit reduces the background, but keeps the 62Ga half-life constant. In fact the half-life changes by 0.01 ms, if we compare a fit without any 62Cu contribution and a fit with the highest possible contribution of 62Cu which is defined by the fact that no constant background is left over in the fit. As the constant background cannot become negative, the 62Ga half-life becomes shorter if the 62Cu contribution is still increased. In the same way, the reduced $`\chi ^2`$ value of the fit stays unity until the background is zero and the 62Ga half-life becomes shorter. This finding means that a possible 62Cu contribution is comparable to a constant background and we can not distinguish both, i.e. a possible 62Cu contamination does not alter the 62Ga half-life. These results are shown graphically in figure 5.

We searched also for a 62Cu contamination in the $`\beta `$-gated $`\gamma `$ spectrum. However, none of the known $`\gamma `$ rays of 62Cu could be identified which supports the conclusion that 62Cu does not play an important role in the present experiment.
* 62Ge ($`T_{1/2}`$=129$`\pm `$35 ms ) can also be produced by the 28Si(40Ca,$`\alpha `$2n) reaction used in the present experiment. The production of this more exotic nucleus, however, is expected to be significantly smaller. Although fusion-evaporation codes do not very reliably predict very small cross sections, it is worth mentioning that the HIVAP code  predicts 62Ge with yields which are a factor of $`10^5`$ smaller than those for 62Ga. In addition, the release efficiency of the Febiad-E2 ion source for germanium isotopes is known to be much smaller than that for gallium isotopes which reduces the probability of an important 62Ge contamination even more. As the half-life of 62Ge is rather close to the one of 62Ga, large amounts of 62Ge would be necessary to alter the half-life determined for 62Ga. We therefore conclude that the influence of 62Ge is negligible.

### E Final experimental result

The evaluation of possible systematic errors from contaminants or other sources shows that no such corrections to the half-life are necessary. Therefore, our experimental result with its statistical error is 116.18(3) ms. However, when averaging the different runs we obtain a reduced $`\chi ^2`$ value of 1.6 which indicates that there might be some hidden inconsistencies between the different runs. A possible explanation could be that our cycle selection procedure does not remove all detector sparks. The probability that the fit function (a constant in our case) is the correct function to describe the data is only 1% with a reduced $`\chi ^2`$ value of 1.6 .

We therefore apply a procedure proposed by the Particle Data Group  and multiply the error bars of the individual runs by the square-root of the reduced $`\chi ^2`$ value obtained from the averaging procedure. The subsequent averaging gives the final experimental value of 116.19(4) ms.

## IV Discussion

Our experimental result of 116.19(4) ms has to be compared with other half-life measurements from the literature. In table I, we list all published half-life measurements for 62Ga. Our result is in excellent agreement with all measurements, but the most recent publication by Hyman et al. . In fact, the discrepancy of the present result with the one of Hyman et al. is at the 1.2 $`\sigma `$ level. When averaging all experimental values, we obtain an error weighted average value of 116.18(4) ms with a reduced $`\chi ^2`$ value of 0.68.

Three measurements for the $`\beta `$-decay branching ratio of 62Ga have been published recently . All measurements yield consistent results of 0.120(21)%, 0.12(3)%, and 0.106(17)% for the population and decay of the first excited state in 62Zn. Hyman et al. used these results and shell-model calculations to determine the superallowed branching ratio to be 99.85$`{}_{0.15}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+0.05}`$%. By using this result together with the measured Q value  of 9171(26) keV and the half-life of 116.18(4) ms, we obtain an $`ft`$ value of $`ft`$ =(3056$`\pm `$47)s for 62Ga. When taking into account the correction factors as calculated by Towner and Hardy , we finally get a corrected $`Ft`$ value of $`Ft`$ = (3056$`\pm `$47)s (the $`Ft`$ value numerically does not change compared to the $`ft`$ value, because the correction factors $`\delta _R^{^{}}`$ and $`\delta _c\delta _{NS}`$ are similar in size). This value is in agreement with the average value from the nine precisely measured transitions between 10C and 54Co of $`Ft`$ =3072.2(8) s .

The large uncertainty of our corrected $`Ft`$ value comes almost entirely from the error associated with the poorly known $`\beta `$-decay Q value. The correction factors can therefore not yet be tested with the experimental precision reached up to now. A much more precise value for the Q value is needed for this purpose. However, assuming that CVC holds and the correction factors are correct, we can determine the Q value for the decay of 62Ga. We obtain a value of 9180(4) keV which is consistent with the value determined by Hyman et al.  of 9183(6) keV.

## V Conclusions

We have performed a high-precision measurement of the half-life of 62Ga. The half-life was determined by detecting the $`\beta `$ particles from a 62Ga source produced at the GSI on-line mass separator. The result of T1/2 = 116.19(4) ms obtained in this work is in agreement with older half-life values from the literature. The present result is more than a factor of four more precise than any previous result. We determine an error-weighted mean value of 116.18(4) ms for the half-life of 62Ga.

This half-life value is now precise enough to contribute to a stringent test of CVC above Z=27 as soon as a more precise $`\beta `$-decay Q value and a refined value of the $`\beta `$-decay branching ratios are known. 62Ga can then also be used to test the correction factors calculated to determine the nucleus independent $`Ft`$ value. Work on these issues is under way.

## Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the help of K. Burkard and W. Hüller during the data taking at GSI and the work of the GSI accelerator crew for delivering a high-intensity, high-quality beam. This work was supported in part by the US Department of Energy under Grant No. W-31-109-ENG-38, by the Région Aquitaine, and by the European Union under contract HPRI-CT-1999-50017.


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# The merger history of clusters and its effect on the X-ray properties of the intracluster medium

## 1 Introduction

Clusters of galaxies are the largest virialized structures in the Universe and mergers between them are among the most energetic events. This paper presents results from resimulations of 20 massive clusters to investigate the effects of the merger history on the X-ray properties of the intracluster medium (ICM).

In recent years high-quality observations of the ICM of distant clusters of galaxies have become available. This has enabled cosmological evolution studies to be carried out on clusters by looking at, for example, the high-redshift $`L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`T_\mathrm{X}`$ relation (Fairley et al., 2000; Borgani et al., 2001; Holden et al., 2002; Vikhlinin et al., 2002; Novicki et al., 2002). This paper will look in detail at the merger history of clusters of galaxies and how this affects their X-ray properties. Previous observational studies of merging clusters of galaxies include Markevitch et al. (2002), Maughan et al. (2003) and Reiprich et al. (2003), and Allen et al. (2002) found evidence that the hottest cluster known (RX J1347.5-1145) is undergoing a merger. We find examples in our simulated clusters that mimic these observed clusters.

The merger rates of simulated Cold Dark Matter (CDM) haloes were first investigated by Lacey & Cole (1994) and Navarro et al. (1995). The results were found to be in agreement with the analytical model of Lacey & Cole (1993). Wechsler et al. (2002) and Zhao et al. (2003) looked at the effects of mergers and accretion on the structure of individual CDM haloes and found that halo concentration tends to increase with increasing formation redshift.

To investigate the effects of mergers on the ICM, Pearce, Thomas & Couchman (1994) simulated the collision of pairs of relaxed cluster haloes and compared these with earlier dark-matter only simulations (Pearce, Thomas & Couchman, 1993). They found that the entropy structure of both the dark matter and the gas is relatively unchanged during the merger, although there is a small tendency to transfer energy from the former to the latter in the core of the system. The time evolution of the X-ray properties of merging clusters were investigated by Ritchie & Thomas (2002) in higher resolution simulations that also included radiative cooling. They showed that the X-ray temperature and luminosity can temporarily increase by a large factor during a merger; the central entropy increase after the merger was found to be a strong function of subcluster mass and impact parameter.

The simulations described above started with isolated, relaxed clusters and investigated different impact parameters and mass ratios. However, real clusters in a cosmological environment are more complicated. They will have some amount of substructure, may be rotating and could collide with more than one subclump at a time. Therefore to find out what kind of mergers clusters tend to undergo and the effect this has on the complex ICM, full cosmological simulations need to be carried out. A first step in this direction was undertaken by Eke, Navarro & Frenk (1998). They undertook resimulations of individual clusters extracted from a dark-matter simulation and showed that the evolution of bulk properties of clusters varied from cluster to cluster. The simulations that we describe in this paper are similar in spirit but have more particles, include radiative cooling of the gas component, and have a much higher time resolution with which to follow the development of the X-ray properties.

We should also mention a couple of other recent studies. Randall et al. (2002) looked at the observational bias that can be induced by the temporary enhancements in luminosity and temperature in merging clusters on determinations of $`\sigma _8`$ and the number density of high-redshift clusters. Motl et al. (2003) undertook radiative simulations of a sample of two clusters and showed that the traditional model of smooth accretion onto clusters is inaccurate in that clusters accrete gas in subclumps which bring precooled gas direct to the core of a cluster. Our work supports both of these ideas.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 the properties of the simulations and the resimulation technique will be described. Section 3 will investigate the mass, luminosity and temperature evolution of the resimulated clusters, with particular types of event being identified and examples of these looked at in detail. The link between scatter in the scaling relations and merger history or substructure will be investigated in Section 4. Finally, in Section 5, we summarise our results and compare the features seen in the simulations to observations.

## 2 The simulations

In a previous paper, Muanwong et al. (2002, hereafter MTKP02), X-ray scaling relations were presented for simulated catalogues containing over 400 groups and clusters. However, because of the volume simulated, only 7 of these had virial temperatures in excess of 3 keV. This study simulates a further 20 such clusters by resimulating regions within a larger box, with the high-resolution regions having simulation parameters identical to that of the earlier run.

Three simulations were undertaken with parameters as shown in Table 1.

The effective number of particles is the number of particles needed to fill the entire simulation volume at the highest resolution in the box. In the simulation HGAS there were equal numbers of gas and dark matter particles in the high-resolution regions. The mass resolution for HGAS refers to the sum of the two species.

### 2.1 The resimulation technique

We first generated a low-resolution run (LDM) with 1603 dark-matter particles. This was run to completion (from $`z=49`$ to $`z=0`$) and the 20 largest clusters identified using the technique described in MTKP02. All the particles within 2 virial radii of the cluster centres were identified. The locations of all these particles on the initial comoving grid (i.e. before the Zel’dovich approximation is applied) were noted and, along with the neighbouring grid points, were flagged as requiring high resolution. Just under 4 per cent of the box was included in the high-resolution mask.

A second set of initial conditions was then generated on a 3203 grid. The original waves used in the LDM simulation were used again with additional new waves generated for frequencies between the LDM & HDM Nyquist frequencies. The high- and low-resolution initial conditions were then combined with the former being used within the previously-identified mask and the latter elsewhere. This resulted in 5 191 535 dark-matter particles (as compared to 4 096 000 in the original low-resolution simulation).

Finally a third set of initial conditions was generated that included both gas and dark matter in the high-resolution regions. To do this, a gas particle was added at the location of each high-resolution dark-matter particle. The masses of the two were adjusted to give the same total mass as before and to give the universal dark matter to baryonic matter mass ratio. The dark-matter and gas particles were given identical displacements and velocities. The total number of particles for this run was 6 443 575.

The hydrodynamics simulation used parameters identical to that for the Radiative model of MTKP02. In particular, it included radiative cooling with a time-varying metalicity $`Z(t)=0.3(t/t_0)Z_{}`$, where $`t_0`$ is the current age of the universe (approximately 12.8 Gyr for this cosmology), using cooling tables from Sutherland & Dopita (1993). Neither preheating nor feedback were included in this run.

The simulations were run on 64 processors on the Cray T3E at the EPCC, using a parallel form of the AP3M SPH code HYDRA (Couchman et al., 1995)111HYDRA is available from http://hydra.susx.ac.uk/. The box was $`200h^1`$ Mpc across and used cosmological parameters: $`h_0=0.71`$; $`\sigma _8=0.9`$; $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}=0.35`$; $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{v}=0.65`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{b}=0.038`$. The shape parameter for the fluctuation spectrum was fixed at $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.21`$ using the fitting function of Bond & Efstathiou (1984). The gravitational softening was set to 100/(1+z)$`h^1`$kpc until $`z=3`$, after which it was held fixed at 25$`h^1`$kpc. The initial redshift was $`z=49`$ and the highest-resolution run required 3706 timesteps to evolve to $`z=0`$.

### 2.2 Cluster properties

The properties of the resimulated clusters at $`z=0`$ are listed in Table 2.

The virial radius is defined as the radius of a sphere, centred on the densest dark-matter particle, that encloses a mean density of 317 (specifically $`178\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}^{0.55}`$, Eke et al. 1998) times the background density (111 times the critical density). The virial mass, $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}`$, is the mass enclosed by this sphere and the virial temperature is the mean specific energy (kinetic plus thermal) of the dark matter and gas, multiplied by $`\mu m_H/k`$, where $`\mu m_H=10^{24}`$g is the mean molecular mass and $`k`$ is the Boltzmann constant. The X-ray temperature is weighted by emission in the soft X-ray band (0.3–1.5 keV), excluding emission from within $`50h^1`$kpc (i.e. physical, not comoving) of the cluster centre (hereafter referred to as cooling-flow corrected emission). The soft-band X-ray luminosity is converted into an estimated bolometric luminosity using the procedure described in MTKP02. The substructure statistic is defined as the separation between the centroid of the mass and the location of the densest dark-matter particle, in units of the virial radius (Thomas et al., 1998). The formation expansion factor, $`a_\mathrm{f}`$, is a characteristic formation epoch for the cluster as defined in Section 3.1.

Note that, after resimulation, the virial mass and temperature of the final cluster in the list dropped significantly. This is because the cluster is in the process of merging with a subcluster that lay just inside the virial radius in the original low-resolution run but has moved just outside it in the high-resolution run. Even so, this cluster still has over 13 000 particles each of gas and dark matter within the virial radius at the final time. The largest cluster has approximately 73 000 particles of each type at the end.

### 2.3 Testing

The mass of dark-matter particles in the low-resolution regions exceeds that of those in the high-resolution regions by a factor of $``$9 (and of the gas particles by a factor of $``$74). It is therefore necessary to ensure that the clusters are not affected by these high mass particles which could cause unphysical two-body relaxation (since the softening is the same for all the particles). The clusters were examined to discern if there were any low-resolution particles within their virial radii at any output time. It was found that only one of the clusters presented was at all affected. This was Cluster 13 which temporarily has up to 2 low-resolution dark-matter particles within the virial radius during a late-time merger. We do not expect this to affect the results and we choose to ignore it.

As a test of our method the clusters were compared to those from the Radiative simulation of MTKP02. A comparison between the temperature-mass relation and the luminosity-temperature relation for the two is shown in Fig. 1

To be consistent with MTKP02, the extent of the clusters is defined by a sphere that encloses a mean density of 200 times the critical density. It is clear that the new clusters are consistent with the previous relations but extend them to higher mass and temperature.

One surprising result, however, is that the number of clusters above a virial temperature of 3 keV in the new runs is far fewer than 8 times the number in the original MTKP02 simulation (20 as compared to 7) which was one-eighth of the volume. To test our normalization, we compare in Fig. 2 the mass-function of the simulated clusters with that predicted by Jenkins et al. (2001) from a compilation of a large number of $`N`$-body simulations. The 20 high-resolution clusters are contained in the final three bins of the plot (except for the most massive cluster that lies off the right-hand-side of the plot). In the same mass-range, 3 clusters are expected in the MTKP02 simulation but 6 are found. We put this down partly to chance and partly due to the fact that simulations do not sample waves correctly on scales comparable to the box-size.

## 3 The time evolution of Mass, X-ray luminosity and temperature

In this section we look at the change in the mass, X-ray luminosity and X-ray temperature of the clusters as they evolve. For simplicity and for ease of physical interpretation, we use the bolometric (i.e. not the soft-band used above) emission from within the virial radius in the rest-frame of the cluster.

The time resolution is defined by the light crossing time of half the box, that is $`0.5\times 200h^1\mathrm{Mpc}\times a/c4.6\times 10^8\times a`$ yr, where $`c`$ is the speed of light and $`a=1/(1+z)`$ is the expansion factor. These times were chosen to match previous simulations which were used to obtain light-cones. This gives sufficient resolution to crudely resolve the mergers for the clusters as a whole, although finer time-resolution would have allowed us to examine accretion into the cores of the clusters in more detail.

### 3.1 The growth of mass

Fig. 3 shows the time-development of the mass enclosed within $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$. The most-massive cluster is located in the top-left panel of this figure (and also in Figs 4, 5 & 6), with successively smaller clusters reading from left-to-right and then top-to-bottom as numbered.

The plots go back to a time ($`a=0.35`$) when the smallest cluster has a virial mass of $`1.5\times 10^{13}h^1`$$`\mathrm{M}_{}`$, corresponding to 600 particles of each species. Also shown is $`M_{500}`$, the mass enclosed by a sphere within which the mean density is 500 times $`\rho _{c0}(1+z)^3`$ where $`\rho _{c0}`$ is the critical density at $`z=0`$.

It is apparent from this figure that there are times when the mass of a cluster increases smoothly and other times when it undergoes sudden jumps; we designate these as minor and major mergers, respectively. Although the division between the two is somewhat arbitrary, it is a useful one, as we will show below that X-ray cluster luminosity evolves quite differently in the two regimes. For the purposes of this paper we define the onset of a major merger as occurring when the jump in $`\mathrm{log}_{10}M_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ between one output time and the next is 0.08 or more (i.e. a factor of 1.2). Visual inspection of the luminosity and temperature evolution suggests that the effects of a major merger last for three successive output times, approximately $`1.4\times 10^9\times a`$ yr. This roughly corresponds to the dynamical time of the clusters, although it does not scale in quite the same manner ($`a`$ instead of $`a^{3/2}`$). The jump criterion of 0.08 is chosen such that, averaged over all the clusters, about half of the mass is accreted during major and half during minor mergers. On average, about 25–30 per cent of the cluster outputs correspond to periods of major merger activity.

From Fig. 3, it can be seen that clusters exhibit a wide variety of formation histories. Some (e.g. clusters 9 or 16) aquire most of their mass in major mergers, while others (clusters 2 and 20) undergo no major mergers at all. The percentage increase of logarithmic mass during major mergers is show in the figure and summarized as a histogram in Table 3.

It is common in the literature (Lacey & Cole, 1994; Navarro et al., 1997) to tacitly assume that cluster properties are fixed at the time of formation and remain unchanged since then. However, only in a minority of cases is it possible to assign a particular ‘formation time’, associated with a major merger, to the cluster. An alternative approach has been suggested by Wechsler et al. (2002) who fit models of the form $`M(a)=M_0e^{2a_\mathrm{f}(1\frac{1}{a})}`$ to the data. The point where the slope of the relation equals 2 defines a characteristic formation epoch for each cluster, as listed in Table 2. We shall investigate later, in Section 4, whether the X-ray properties of clusters are correlated with their formation time.

The growth in $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ is relatively monotonic although there is sometimes a slight decline after a merger. The rises in $`M_{500}`$ occur later and are often followed by a decline as the central regions of a cluster settle down after the merger. For this reason, it may be thought that $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ is a more useful measure of the mass of a cluster. However, it will be shown in Section 4 that the X-ray properties are more closely correlated with $`M_{500}`$, because the bulk of the X-ray emission originates in this central region.

### 3.2 Long-term trends in X-ray properties

Figs 4 & 5 show the time-development of the bolometric luminosity and emission-weighted temperature of the clusters.

The thick line shows the total emission and the thin line shows cooling-flow corrected emission.

These figures show that each cluster’s X-ray temperature and luminosity are undergoing continual fluctuations associated with both major and minor mergers. These tend to obscure the long-term trends, and so we have defined smoothed versions of these plots in which the average profiles are defined as the median from each set of 5 successive output times.

Fig. 6 shows the trajectory of the smoothed X-ray properties for each cluster in the luminosity-temperature plane.

Also displayed are the fractional logarithmic mass accreted during major mergers, and vectors indicating the overall drift of the cluster across the $`L_\mathrm{X}T_\mathrm{X}`$ plane. It can be seen that the clusters that accrete only a small amount of mass during major mergers tend to move down and to the right (i.e. they get less luminous with time), whereas those that accrete most of their mass in this way move up and to the right (i.e. they get more luminous). This is confirmed by the statistics in Table 3 which show the average direction of motion across the $`L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`T_\mathrm{X}`$ plane in four bins corresponding to different fractional logarithmic mass accreted during major mergers.

For the majority of their lives, between major mergers, clusters grow dimmer and heat up (on average increasing their temperature by 0.20 in the log with a gradient in the $`\mathrm{log}L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`\mathrm{log}T_\mathrm{X}`$ plane of -1.46) so that the normalisation of the $`L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`T_\mathrm{X}`$ relation decreases with time. During major mergers, clusters get brighter and hotter (on average increasing their temperature by 0.26 in the log with a gradient of 1.54). If we allow for the time the mergers take then this motion is roughly parallel to the mean relation ($`L_\mathrm{X}`$$`T_\mathrm{X}^{2.8}`$). This would suggest the merger history of clusters does not induce significant scatter in the relation. Thus we can think of the mean $`L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`T_\mathrm{X}`$ relation as gradually drifting to lower normalization as time increases. Major mergers do not affect this drift but shift individual clusters along the relation to higher temperature and luminosity.

Simple scaling arguments suggest that $`LM\rho T^{1/2}`$ where $`M`$ is the cluster mass, $`\rho `$ the density and $`T`$ the temperature. (Note that the dominant contribution to the flux comes from the region where $`\rho r^{3/2}`$ so this defines the characteristic size to use in the scaling relation.) For the population as a whole one would expect the luminosity to decrease with time, at fixed mass, as the characteristic density decreases roughtly in proportion to the mean density of the Universe. However, for individual clusters, the increase in mass more than makes up for this. However, as we have seen above, the increase in luminosity is not smooth. During major mergers the mass increases abruptly. There will be an influx of cool, low-entropy gas and much of this will reach the core, causing a long-term increase in luminosity. Between major mergers the mass continues to increase but the influx of low-entropy gas is insufficient to replenish gas lost by radiative cooling and the core density and luminosity decrease. This will be looked at in more detail in a future paper.

### 3.3 Short-term fluctuations in the X-ray properties

We next turn from the long-term behaviour of the smoothed temperature and luminosity profiles to look at the fluctuations during mergers. These exhibit a variety of behaviours that we shall illustrate with specific examples drawn from our simulations. Figs 7, 9, 11 & 13 show maps of several example clusters at different expansion factors as indicated in the captions. The maps are generated in the same manner as in Onuora, Kay & Thomas (2003). The half-width of each map is equal to the virial radius and the emission is projected along the line-of-sight on each side of the clusters to a depth equal to twice the virial radius. The contours show X-ray surface brightness and are separated by 0.2 dex; the colours indicate emission-weighted temperature; and the arrows show the mass-weighted bulk flow, normalized to the highest velocity grid point. The corresponding evolution in the luminosity-temperature plane is shown in Figs 8, 10, 12 & 14; in order to show the relative size of fluctuations, these figures all have the same dynamic range.

#### 3.3.1 Slow accretion

Even when not undergoing major mergers, clusters still show fluctuations in their luminosity and temperature evolution. However, these are reduced if emission from within 50$`h^1`$kpc of the cluster core is excluded (see Table 4). What is happening is that the clusters are growing by accretion of small subclumps and the fluctuations are due to emission from low-entropy gas that makes its way to the cluster core and cools rapidly. This sometimes causes a temporary decrease in the temperature of the cluster core, such as the two dips in the temperature of Cluster 10 at expansion factors of 0.60 and 0.67.

Cluster 2, the second most-massive cluster in our sample, has accreted all its mass during minor mergers. Fig. 7 shows snapshots at $`a0.56`$ in which the infall of small subclumps is clearly visible. The substructure statistic is less than 0.1 throughout the evolution of the cluster, indicating that the subclumps are too small to significantly displace the centre of mass. Even so, the accretion gives rise to small-scale scatter as seen in Figs 4, 5 & 8. At any particular time, most clusters show this kind of low-level activity similar to the minor mergers investigated by Motl et al. (2003).

#### 3.3.2 Single-peaked major mergers

The most-common behaviour seen in major mergers is a temporary upward fluctuation in luminosity that is usually accompanied by an increase in temperature (the residuals of $`L_\mathrm{X}`$ and $`T_\mathrm{X}`$ have a Spearman rank coefficient of 0.48 which corresponds to a correlation with a significance of over 99.9 per cent). Many examples of this can be detected in Figs 4 & 5. These fluctuations are not restricted to the core and correspond to more violent mergers that boost the luminosity of the whole cluster through compression of the intracluster medium.

Figs. 9 & 10 show an example from Cluster 8 at $`a0.63`$. This is caused by an approximately equal-mass merger (of clusters with masses $`1.82\times 10^{14}h^1\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and $`1.41\times 10^{14}h^1\mathrm{M}_{}`$) that produces a planar compression front perpendicular to the direction of the merger. The planar nature of the front can be more or less obvious than that shown here, depending upon the impact parameter of the collision, the degree of substructure and the viewing angle.

#### 3.3.3 Double-peaked major mergers

Sometimes a merger will be associated with a double peak in the luminosity, the first associated with an increase in temperature and the second a decrease. This happens when the cores of the main cluster and the in-falling subcluster do not merge directly but orbit about each other for a while before doing so. Unfortunately the time resolution of our outputs is insufficient to determine whether this is the generic behaviour.

Fig. 11 shows a major merger of this type in Cluster 13 at $`a0.6`$. In the first two panels the subclump approaches and in the third panel the clusters collide and the temperature and luminosity peaks. At the time of maximum luminosity, however, the surface brightness contours are relatively round and there is little evidence from the surface-brightness alone that a merger is taking place (the asymmetry that is visible in the figure is from in-falling matter that does not contribute significantly to the luminosity and temperature variation). The cores have not lost all relative momentum however and so they reseparate and do not fully merge until the final panel. This brings about a second peak in the luminosity which is only observed in the core (see Fig. 12). Since this is relatively cool, the X-ray temperature drops at this point before stabilizing at a higher value. Note that, at the point the cores merge, the cluster again looks fairly spherical and relaxed.

This is the behaviour observed in the toy models of Ritchie & Thomas (2002). The largest peak in the luminosity in these simulations was when the clusters first collided. Then the luminosity dropped as the core expanded again and then increased to a stable level as the core finally settled. This behaviour was more pronounced in off-axis collisions where the cores missed each other on the first pass.

#### 3.3.4 Major mergers leading to a permanent increase in luminosity

Finally, there are major mergers that cause a permanent jump in luminosity and temperature after the initial fluctuation associated with the merger has died away. Half of the mergers involve a jump in the smoothed $`L_\mathrm{X}`$ (i.e. a permanent jump in $`L_\mathrm{X}`$) of over a factor of 2 and half of the mergers involve a jump in the smoothed $`T_\mathrm{X}`$ of more than a factor of 1.4.

Fig. 13 shows images before, during and after one such merger which Cluster 11 undergoes at $`a0.6`$. There is a small amount of hot, compressed gas as the subclump approaches but not so obviously planar as in some other mergers. At the point of merging the cluster looks fairly relaxed in this projection although the substructure statistic is greater than 0.1 throughout.

Fig. 14 shows that $`L_\mathrm{X}`$ and $`T_\mathrm{X}`$ increase together approximately parallel to the $`L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`T_\mathrm{X}`$ relation in an elongated, clockwise ellipse. This is because the luminosity increases when the clump crosses $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$, before it has had a chance to interact strongly with the ICM and raise the temperature of the gas. A similar effect is seen in Fig. 10 and the first (main) merger in Fig. 12

## 4 Scatter in the X-ray scaling relations

To a greater or lesser degree all of the X-ray scaling relations show scatter both in observations and simulations. Some of this will be due to observational errors and resolution effects. However, as clusters have differing merger histories and are not self-similar, it is apparent that some, perhaps most, of this scatter is physical. As Figs 4 & 5 show, much of the scatter in luminosity and temperature comes from gas within $`50h^1`$ kpc of the cluster centre. For this reason, we omit the central gas when plotting the scaling relations.

Fig. 15 shows the current-day X-ray temperature-mass relation within $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ (top panel) and $`R_{500}`$ (bottom panel). The straight line is the best-fit relation to a straight line of slope 0.60 in log space. This slope was chosen to agree with that from the clusters in MTKP02 which cover a much wider dynamic range in mass. We have investigated a wide variety of properties to try to find the main cause of the scatter. These include the following:

* The most obvious source of scatter is the fluctuations in temperature associated with mergers, i.e. the difference between the actual temperature and the smoothed temperature. However, at the present day this is of a magnitude (approximately 0.03 dex) that is too small to have much of an effect. We have looked for a correlation in these fluctuations and deviations from the temperature-mass relation, and find none.
* The fractional logarithmic mass accreted during major mergers is also uncorrelated to scatter.
* Wechsler et al. (2002) found a correlation between cluster formation time and the concentration of the dark matter. We used their method to assign characteristic formation epochs to each cluster (see Table 2) but again found no correlation with scatter.
* The rate of increase of mass of both the cluster as a whole and of the core mass, averaged over different time periods before the present. This was also unsuccessful.

In the end, only one of the statistics that we looked at gave a strong correlation with scatter from the X-ray temperature-mass relation and that was the degree of substructure. The substructure statistic, defined as the separation between the position of the centroid and the dark-matter density maximum in units of the cluster radius, is listed in Table 2. (Note that this statistic is a function of the cluster radius; the values in the table are for properties averaged within the virial radius.) The substructure statistic has several advantages over some of the other measures that we tried: it is relatively simple to calculate, it depends only upon the properties of the cluster at the present day, and it is closely related to some observable quantity (for example Schuecker et al. (2001) observed substructure in $`52\pm 7`$ per cent of clusters from the REFLEX+BCG sample).

In Fig. 15, clusters with a substructure statistic greater than 0.1 are plotted as circles. It is immediately apparent from the upper panel that a large part of the scatter is related to substructure (formally, the distance below the line correlates to substructure with a Spearman rank coefficient of 0.485, a significance of more than 95 per cent). It is interesting that most clusters with substructure scatter low on this plot. Some of these contain subclumps that are falling into the cluster for the first time and which have raised its mass without yet significantly altering the emission-weighted temperature; others are clusters which are undergoing a core-bounce after a merger and for which the temperature is temporarily slightly too low.

It is apparent from the larger scatter in the upper panel of Fig. 15, that the virial mass cannot be accurately determined from a cluster’s X-ray properties when spatial information is not available. However, we can reduce the scatter considerably by moving to a more compact radius (see Table 5). This has several advantages: the number of clusters showing substructure is reduced, the properties are measured at radii that are more accessible to X-ray observations, and the substructure that is measured is more directly related to subclumps that are interacting strongly with the intracluster medium and that will be influencing the X-ray properties.

The lower panel in Fig. 15 shows the $`T_\mathrm{X}`$-$`M_{500}`$ relation. As can be seen, the relation is much tighter than before, and interestingly, the scatter of high substructure clusters from the relation is much-reduced. The circle that lies furthest above the solid line is Cluster 13 which has recently merged and whose temperature is still enhanced by the associated compression of the ICM. This cluster was even further from the line in the original plot (the topmost large triangle) but did not show up as having substructure because the subclump was too close to the centre. The circle that lies furthest below the line in the bottom panel is Cluster 5 which temporarily has a cooler temperature than the average due to core expansion following a recent merger.

Note that, for most of the clusters, the mass decreases slightly in the move from $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ to $`R_{500}`$, but for the two left-most clusters in the bottom panel (Clusters 7 and 14) it changes significantly. It can be seen from Table 2 that these are the two clusters with the highest degree of substructure at the end. What has happened is that while $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ encloses the subclump causing the substructure $`R_{500}`$ does not. The luminosity of these clusters also decreases significantly and they would be easily seen as bimodel in any X-ray observation. For this reason, we omit them from the scatter statistics listed in Table 5.

Having eliminated the principal cause of the scatter in the $`T_\mathrm{X}`$-$`M`$ relation, we again tested to see whether any of the properties considered earlier now correlate with the residual scatter, but with negative results.

Figs 16 and 17 show equivalent plots for the luminosity-mass and luminosity-temperature relations. The former has a similar variation with substructure as seen in the temperature-mass relation. The latter shows no obvious correlation of scatter with substructure, consistent with our earlier observation that motion in the $`L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`T_\mathrm{X}`$ plane during mergers tends to be parallel to the mean relation. However, in the upper panel of Fig. 17 there is a concentration of clusters toward the bottom-left showing substructure. This reflects the fact that the sample was selected on the basis of virial mass and contains a number of clusters for which the merging is not complete. Conversely, in any X-ray luminosity or temperature-limited sample there will be a bias against high virial mass clusters with a high degree of substructure. This bias is reduced when properties are measured within $`R_{500}`$ instead.

## 5 Discussion

In this study, the formation of 20 large clusters of galaxies has been followed by resimulating the regions around them at high resolution. The X-ray properties were found to vary with time, driven mainly by the merging history of the clusters. Accretion during major mergers tends to increase a cluster’s luminosity, pushing it up the $`L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`T_\mathrm{X}`$ relation, while between major mergers it slowly decreases, following the movement of the $`L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`T_\mathrm{X}`$ relation. In addition to this long-term variation, there are short-lived fluctuations associated with the merger itself.

Over the period investigated clusters were said to be undergoing a major merger about 25–30 per cent of the time. However, to convert this to a number that can be compared to X-ray observations is very complex. Firstly, our definition of a major merger was very ad-hoc and a more detailed comparision of possible definitions with X-ray observability would be required. In addition, there will be strong selection effects that favour high-redshift clusters undergoing temporary boosts in X-ray luminosity. A detailed investigation of these biases will be required in order to correcctly interpret observations of the X-ray properties of clusters at high redshift.

As a subclump crosses $`R_{_{\mathrm{vir}}}`$, the mass and the luminosity increase but the temperature stays roughly constant or decreases slightly (since the subclump will be cooler than the cluster). This causes the cluster to move below the $`T_\mathrm{X}`$-$`M`$ and $`L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`M`$ relations and so clusters with structure within $`R_{_{\mathrm{vir}}}`$ tend to be scattered low on the plots. For this reason, the mass within a smaller region such as $`R_{500}`$ correlates more closely with X-ray properties than does the virial mass.

As the subclump moves through the ICM of the cluster, it compresses the gas in front of it. This causes adiabatic heating and can be observed as a hot planar compression front. These features have been observed, for example by Maughan et al. (2003). Fig. 5 from their paper shows surface-brightness contours from a Chandra map of Cl J0152.7-1357 a cluster at $`z=0.833`$ and shows that the cluster is undergoing a major merger. Fig. 11 from the same paper shows the hardness of the X-rays with lighter regions representing harder radiation. Given that harder X-rays will be produced by higher temperature regions it can be seen that the gas between the merging clusters has been heated as it is compressed, similar to our clusters (see panel 1 of Figs. 9, 11 & 13).

By the time the subclump reaches $`R_{500}`$ the cluster will be starting to undergo a merger boost and will start to move up in the $`L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`M`$ and $`T_\mathrm{X}`$-$`M`$ planes back toward the mean relations. This means that clusters with structure will not necessarily scatter off the $`T_\mathrm{X}`$-$`M`$ or $`L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`M`$ relations when properties within this radius are considered. Usually the luminosity and temperature increase together pushing the cluster roughly parallel to the $`L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`T_\mathrm{X}`$ relation. However, if the merger triggers cooling within the cluster core then the X-ray temperature decreases and the cluster will scatter above the $`L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`T_\mathrm{X}`$ relation and below the $`T_\mathrm{X}`$-$`M`$ relation.

As the subclump moves toward the core the compression front will get hotter and closer to the core of both the subclump and the cluster. This means that it will start to ram-pressure strip the subclump of its diffuse ICM. Therefore even if the subclump’s core survives the merger for a time, the diffuse gas will be assimilated into the cluster by the peak of the merger.

Once the subclump has reached the core, the luminosity and temperature boost will have reached their maximum but, unless the infalling clump has a significant impact parameter, the cluster will be roughly spherical and appear to have little substructure. Grego et al. (2004) observe that the luminous, $`z=0.783`$ cluster MS1137.5+6625 appears spherical in the optical and in X-rays but closer inspection with Chandra observations show that the cluster is not relaxed. The mass distribution is very compact, consistent with a large amount of recently accreted material. Since the luminosity can be increased at this time by up to an order of magnitude above what a truly relaxed cluster of similar mass would be, then this could impose a bias in a flux limited sample of clusters, particularly at high redshift, toward clusters at the point of merging.

The effect of merger boosts in biasing the estimate of cluster parameters from high-redshift X-ray cluster observations has been investigated by Randall et al. (2002).

After the peak of the collapse, the core of the subclump will continue to move past or through the core of the cluster. This behaviour has also been observed. Chandra observations of 1E0657-56 ($`z=0.296`$) presented by Markevitch et al. (2002) observe a ‘bullet’ which is surmized to be the core of a subcluster. The subcluster has previously passed through the core of the main cluster (some 0.1–0.2 Gyr ago) and has had its surrounding gas removed by ram-pressure stripping. It is unclear whether this object exceeds the escape speed of the cluster or not, but it still shows that a subclump can pass through the core of a cluster and that the haloes can merge while the two cores continue on their paths.

If, as is likely, the core of the infalling subclump does not exceed the escape speed, then it will at some later point return to the core and merge. This will cause the luminosity of the core to increase once more. If the temperature profile does not change significantly when this happens, then the increase in emission at the cooler core will cause an emission-weighted temperature for the whole cluster to decrease. This will move the cluster up and to the left on the $`L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`T_\mathrm{X}`$ plane pushing the cluster above the $`L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`T_\mathrm{X}`$ relation and so could contribute to the scatter about the relation. By this time the rest of the cluster will have settled down again. This will mean that the luminosity boost at the core will make the core much brighter than the surrounding temperature or luminosity should suggest. This could make the cluster look briefly like a cooling-flow cluster with a very high accretion rate. We find instantaneous mass accretion rates $`\dot{M}=L/(5kT/2\mu m_H)`$ of up to 700 $`h^2`$$`\mathrm{M}_{}`$ yr-1 similar to observed values in high redshift clusters (Edge et al. 1994; Fabian & Crawford 1995; Allen, Fabian & Kneib 1996; Allen et al. 1996).

The current problem with cooling-flow clusters is that $`t_{\mathrm{cool}}t_\mathrm{H}`$ and so a lot of gas should have cooled, but this is not observed (Kaastra et al., 2001; Peterson et al., 2001, 2003). Unfortunately, even considering the Loken et al. (1999) result that cooling-flow clusters usually occupy densely populated regions where clusters are more likely to be undergoing mergers, this explanation cannot explain the lack of cold gas in all cooling-flow clusters. A ROSAT survey (Peres et al., 1998) found that 70-90 per cent of clusters have cool cores. By their very nature the core mergers are short lived and so would be rare. However, it must be accepted that the accretion of subclumps will continually feed the cores of clusters with low-entropy gas and this must be a contributory factor to the resolution of the cool-core problem. The accretion of low-entropy material by clusters will be investigated in a future paper.

## Acknowledgements

DRR is supported by a PPARC studentship. STK is supported by PPARC. These simulations were undertaken on the Cray T3E (RIP) at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre as part of the the Virgo Consortium investigations of cosmological structure formation. We would like to thank the referee whose comments helped to considerably improve the content of the paper.