2020A&A...642A..89Z

Context. Previous Chandra observations of the Abell 3411-3412 merging galaxy cluster system revealed an outbound bullet-like sub-cluster in the northern part and many surface brightness edges at the southern periphery, where multiple diffuse sources are also reported from radio observations. Notably, a southeastern radio relic associated with fossil plasma from a radio galaxy and with a detected X-ray edge provides direct evidence of shock re-acceleration. The properties of the reported surface brightness features have yet to be constrained from a thermodynamic viewpoint.
Aims. We use the XMM-Newton and Suzaku observations of Abell 3411-3412 to reveal the thermodynamical nature of the previously reported re-acceleration site and other X-ray surface brightness edges. We also aim to investigate the temperature profile in the low-density outskirts with Suzaku data.
Methods. We performed both imaging and spectral analysis to measure the density jump and the temperature jump across multiple known X-ray surface brightness discontinuities. We present a new method to calibrate the vignetting function and spectral model of the XMM-Newton soft proton background. Archival Chandra, Suzaku, and ROSAT data are used to estimate the cosmic X-ray background and Galactic foreground levels with improved accuracy compared to standard blank sky spectra.
Results. At the southeastern edge, temperature jumps revealed by both XMM-Newton and Suzaku point to a M∼1.2 shock, which agrees with the previous result from surface brightness fits with Chandra. The low Mach number supports the re-acceleration scenario at this shock front. The southern edge shows a more complex scenario, where a shock and the presence of stripped cold material may coincide. There is no evidence for a bow shock in front of the northwestern "bullet" sub-cluster. The Suzaku temperature profiles in the southern low-density regions are marginally higher than the typical relaxed cluster temperature profile. The measured value kT₅₀₀=4.84±0.04±0.19keV with XMM-Newton and kT₅₀₀=5.17±0.07±0.13keV with Suzaku are significantly lower than previously inferred from Chandra.