Rutgers University Astrophysics Seminar

The hot, diffuse intracluster medium (ICM) permeates the deep gravitational potential wells of galaxy clusters and serves as a window inside these massive, dark matter dominated structures. Radiating primarily at X-ray wavelengths, the ICM encodes signatures of the everlasting tug-of-war between gravitational forces and energetic feedback effects from star formation and AGN activity experienced by these systems over billions of years of cosmic time. In this talk, I will show how spatially resolved measurements of ICM density, thermodynamics and chemistry for systems at increasingly high redshift provide key constraints on models of cluster evolution in the context of these feedback processes. I will describe new observational and modeling efforts that help us extend these measurements into the faint, high redshift regime using current generation flagship missions (Chandra + XMM-Newton), and discuss how upcoming surveys and next-generation instrumentation can further improve this work in the coming decade.