2020MNRAS.495.2022D

Collision events lead to peculiar morphologies in the intracluster gas of galaxies clusters. That seems to be the case of Abell 1644, a nearby galaxy cluster, composed of three main structures: the southern cluster that exhibits a spiral-like morphology, A1644S; the northern cluster seen in X-ray observations, A1644N1; and the recently discovered substructure, A1644N2. By means of N-body hydrodynamical simulations, we attempt to reconstruct the dynamical history of this system. These simulations resulted in two specific scenarios: (i) The collision between A1644S and A1644N2. Our best model has an inclination between the merger plane and the plane of the sky of 30°, and reaches the best morphology 1.6 Gyr after the pericentric passage. At this instant A1644N2 is gas poor, becoming nearly undetectable in X-ray emission. This model shows a good agreement with observations; (ii) The collision between A1644S and A1644N1. This approach did not give rise to results as satisfactory as the first scenario, due to great disturbances in density and mismatching temperature maps. As a complementary study, we perform a three-cluster simulation using as base the best-fitting model to reproduce the current state of A1644 with the three main structures. This scenario presented a good agreement to the global morphology of the observations. Thus, we find that the more likely scenario is a collision between A1644S and the newly discovered A1644N2, where A1644N1 may be present as long as it does not greatly interfere in the formation of the spiral feature.