Spiral flows in galaxy clusters

We study the spiral thermal structures and cold fronts found in the intracluster medium of well-observed galaxy clusters. Such spirals are thought to arise from merger events. While some of their properties were reproduced in merger simulations, the nature of the underlying flow is not well understood. We show that the spirals can be reproduced in highly simplified simulations, even using a rigid gravitational potential, only two dimensions, and a synthetic initial perturbation that introduces angular momentum. The properties of these synthetic spirals generally agree with observations, and facilitate a simple model for the flow in evolved spirals.