Helen Russell

The galaxy cluster A2146 is undergoing a major merger and hosts two huge, bright Mach 2 shock fronts, which provide a unique opportunity to measure the electron-ion equilibration timescale along with other key transport phenomena.  Collisionless shocks occur over a wide range of scales from accretion shocks to supernova remnants and heliospheric shocks.  However, only clusters, particularly A2146, allow us to map the large-scale equilibration with a single observation, which is unaffected by cross-calibration uncertainties.  I will present preliminary results from a new 2.4Ms Chandra observation that provides a measure of this timescale, reveals detailed shock structure and traces the disruption of both cool cores, including heating and mixing of metal-rich, cool gas blobs in ram pressure stripped tails.