X-ray and radio interactions in the cores of cooling flow clusters

We present high-resolution ROSAT X-ray and radio observations of three cooling flow clusters containing steep-spectrum radio sources at their cores. All three systems exhibit strong signs of interaction between the radio plasma and the hot intracluster medium. Two clusters, A133 and A2626, show enhanced X-ray emission spatially coincident with the radio source, whereas the third cluster, A2052, exhibits a large region of X-ray excess surrounding much of the radio source. Using three-dimensional numerical simulations, we show that a perturbed jet propagating through a cooling flow atmosphere can give rise to amorphous radio morphologies, particularly in the case where the jet was "turned off" and allowed to age passively. In addition, the simulated X-ray surface brightness produced both excesses and deficits as seen observationally.