Identifying the Effect of Magnetic Fields on Gas Motion in Galaxy Cluster Merger Simulations

Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound objects in the universe. As such, they are important probes of universal constants such as the dark matter and baryon densities.

I worked under Dr. John ZuHone at Harvard to analyze the physics within galaxy cluster mergers. In particular, we focused on characterizing the magnetic field within cluster cores throughout a merger. We used magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations using FLASH with 9 different orientations of cluster mass ratios and impact parameters (motivated by actual observations).