Investigating X-ray cavities and the environmental effects

X-ray cavities are typically detected as surface brightness depression in X-ray diffuse emission from hot gas in high resolution X-ray images (i.e., Chandra and XMM-Newton). Showing the coincidence of location with radio jets, X-ray cavities imply that the radio jets interact with interstellar/intergalactic medium. It is important to understand them since they can be a clue of understanding AGN feedback to their host galaxies. To understand the physics of the AGN feedback, X-ray cavity has been actively studied while there are only a few statistical studies on X-ray cavity based on small or incomplete samples. Hence, a systematic study with a large sample is needed. With the condition of sufficient X-ray photons to detect surface brightness depression, we constructed a large sample of 133 galaxy clusters, galaxy groups, and individual galaxies to investigate X-ray cavities. We detected 201 cavities from 94 objects using two detection methods (i.e., beta-modeling and unsharp masking method), and confirmed the cavity size-distance relation over a large dynamical range. The size-distance relation does not vary for different environments (i.e., galaxy cluster, groups, and individual galaxies), suggesting that there is little environmental effect on the formation of X-ray cavity.