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Disentangling multiple gas kinematic drivers in the Perseus galaxy cluster

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Galaxy clusters, the Universe’s largest halo structures, are filled with an X-ray-emitting gas with a temperature between 10 million and 100 million degrees. Their evolution is shaped by energetic processes such as feedback from supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and mergers with other cosmic structures1,2,3. The imprints of these processes on gas kinematics remain largely unknown, restricting our understanding of energy conversion within clusters4. High-resolution spectral mapping with the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) observatory5 offers a way forward6,7. Here we present XRISM kinematic measurements of the Perseus cluster, radially covering the extent of its cool core. We find direct evidence for at least two dominant drivers of gas motions operating on distinct physical scales: a small-scale driver in the inner approximately 60 kpc, probably associated with the SMBH feedback; and a large-scale driver in the outer core, powered by mergers. This finding suggests that, during the active phase, SMBH feedback drives gas motions, which, if fully dissipated into heat, could have a substantial role in offsetting radiative cooling losses in the Perseus core. Our study underscores the necessity of kinematic mapping observations of extended sources to robustly characterize the velocity fields and their role in the evolution of massive halos. It further offers a kinematic diagnostic for SMBH feedback models.

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Fig. 1: High-resolution X-ray image and spectrum of the Perseus cluster.
Fig. 2: Radial profile of gas kinematic properties in the Perseus cluster measured with XRISM/Resolve.
Fig. 3: Kinematic maps of the hot gas in the Perseus cluster.
Fig. 4: Estimated turbulent dissipation heating and radiative cooling rates in the Perseus cluster, assuming that the observed velocity broadening is owing to turbulence.

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Data availability

The observational data analysed during this study are available in the NASA HEASARC repository (https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xrism/). XRISM observation IDs 000154000, 000155000, 000156000, 000157000 and 000158000 were used, in addition to Chandra observation IDs 3209, 4289, 4946–4953, 6139, 6145, 6146, 11713–11716, 12025, 12033, 12036 and 12037. The atomic databases used in this study are available online at AtomDB (http://www.atomdb.org/).

Code availability

Publicly released versions of the FLASH code are available via the Flash Center for Computational Science’s website (https://flash.rochester.edu/). Our turbulent simulation set-ups used the FLASH built-in Stir unit. The base simulation code AREPO is publicly available at https://arepo-code.org/ and https://gitlab.mpcdf.mpg.de/vrs/arepo. The specific branch of AREPO used in this study includes a custom AGN implementation developed by Rainer Weinberger, as described in ref. 78. This branch is not publicly available, but access may be granted by the code developer upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant numbers JP22H00158, JP22H01268, JP22K03624, JP23H04899, JP21K13963, JP24K00638, JP24K17105, JP21K13958, JP21H01095, JP23K20850, JP24H00253, JP21K03615, JP24K00677, JP20K14491, JP23H00151, JP19K21884, JP20H01947, JP20KK0071, JP23K20239, JP24K00672, JP24K17104, JP24K17093, JP20K04009, JP21H04493, JP20H01946, JP23K13154, JP19K14762, JP20H05857, JP23K03459 and JP25K23398. Additional support came from NASA grant numbers 80NSSC23K0650, 80NSSC20K0733, 80NSSC18K0978, 80NSSC20K0883, 80NSSC20K0737, 80NSSC24K0678, 80NSSC18K1684, 80NNSC22K1922 and 80GSFC21M0002. A.B. was supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant number JP23H01211. E.B. acknowledges support from NASA grants 80NSSC24K1148 and 80NSSC24K1774. L.C. acknowledges support from NASA grant 80NSSC25K7064. C.D. acknowledges support from STFC through grant ST/T000244/1. R.F. was supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant number JP23K03454. L.G. acknowledges financial support from the Canadian Space Agency (grant 18XARMSTMA). Y.M. was supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant number JP23K22548. M.M. acknowledges support from Yamada Science Foundation. P.P. acknowledges support from NASA grants 80NSSC18K0988 and 80NSSC23K1656 and NASA contract NAS8-0360. M.S. acknowledges the support by the RIKEN Pioneering Project Evolution of Matter in the Universe (r-EMU) and Rikkyo University Special Fund for Research (Rikkyo SFR). A.T. and the present research are in part supported by the Kagoshima University postdoctoral research programme (KU-DREAM). Y.T. was supported by the Strategic Research Center of Saitama University. S.Y. acknowledges support by the RIKEN SPDR Program. I.Z., A.H. and C.Z. acknowledge partial support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation through the Sloan Research Fellowship. I.Z. performed part of the work at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) supported by grant NSF PHY-2309135. C.Z. was supported by the GACR grant 21-13491X. J.H.-L. acknowledges the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) grant 22EXPXRISM. S.U. acknowledges the supports from the National Science and Technology Council of Taiwan (111-2112-M-001-026-MY3) and by Program for Forming Japan’s Peak Research Universities (J-PEAKS), respectively. T.Y. and A.T. acknowledge support by NASA under award number 80GSFC24M0006. Part of this work was performed under the auspices of the US Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. This work was supported by the JSPS Core-to-Core Program, JPJSCCA20220002. The simulations presented in this paper were carried out using the Midway computing cluster provided by the University of Chicago Research Computing Center. The software used in this work was developed in part by the DOE NNSA and DOE Office of Science supported Flash Center for Computational Science at the University of Chicago and the University of Rochester.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Astronomy, University of Geneva, Versoix, Switzerland

    Marc Audard, Dominique Eckert & Stephane Paltani

  2. Department of Physics, Ehime University, Ehime, Japan

    Hisamitsu Awaki, Megumi Shidatsu & Yuichi Terashima

  3. Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Ralf Ballhausen, Michael Loewenstein, François Mernier, Richard Mushotzky & Anna Ogorzalek

  4. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

    Ralf Ballhausen, Rozenn Boissay-Malaquin, Renata Cumbee, Javier A. García, Kenji Hamaguchi, Takayuki Hayashi, Edmund Hodges-Kluck, Ann Hornschemeier, Timothy Kallman, Richard Kelley, Caroline Kilbourne, Maurice Leutenegger, Michael Loewenstein, Maxim Markevitch, François Mernier, Koji Mukai, Anna Ogorzalek, Takashi Okajima, Robert Petre, Frederick S. Porter, Katja Pottschmidt, Keisuke Tamura, Ayşegül Tümer, Brian J. Williams, Tahir Yaqoob, Mihoko Yukita & Nhut Truong

  5. Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science and Technology, NASA/GSFC (CRESST II), Greenbelt, MD, USA

    Ralf Ballhausen, Rozenn Boissay-Malaquin, Kenji Hamaguchi, Takayuki Hayashi, Michael Loewenstein, François Mernier, Koji Mukai, Anna Ogorzalek, Katja Pottschmidt, Keisuke Tamura, Ayşegül Tümer & Tahir Yaqoob

  6. Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Aya Bamba & Kouichi Hagino

  7. Department of Physics, Technion, Technion City, Haifa, Israel

    Ehud Behar

  8. Center for Space Science and Technology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), Baltimore, MD, USA

    Rozenn Boissay-Malaquin, Kenji Hamaguchi, Takayuki Hayashi, Koji Mukai, Katja Pottschmidt, Keisuke Tamura, Ayşegül Tümer, Tahir Yaqoob & Nhut Truong

  9. Center for Astrophysics, Harvard–Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Laura Brenneman, Adam Foster, Paul Plucinsky, Randall Smith, John ZuHone & Elena Bellomi

  10. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA

    Gregory V. Brown, Megan E. Eckart & Natalie Hell

  11. Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, Michigan, MI, USA

    Lia Corrales & Jon M. Miller

  12. SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Elisa Costantini, Liyi Gu, Jelle Kaastra, Aurora Simionescu & Kostas Migkas

  13. ESO, Garching bei München, Germany

    María Díaz Trigo

  14. Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, Department of Physics, University of Durham, Durham, UK

    Chris Done

  15. Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Kanagawa, Japan

    Tadayasu Dotani, Ken Ebisawa, Ryuichi Fujimoto, Kotaro Fukushima, Katsuhiro Hayashi, Daiki Ishi, Manabu Ishida, Yoshiaki Kanemaru, Yoshitomo Maeda, Shoji Ogawa, Hiromasa Suzuki, Makoto Tashiro, Yukikatsu Terada, Masahiro Tsujimoto, Nagomi Uchida, Shin Watanabe, Hiroya Yamaguchi, Noriko Yamasaki & Tessei Yoshida

  16. Department of Economics, Kumamoto Gakuen University, Kumamoto, Japan

    Satoshi Eguchi

  17. Department of Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Teruaki Enoto, Takeshi G. Tsuru & Hiroyuki Uchida

  18. Department of Physics, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo, Japan

    Yuichiro Ezoe, Yutaka Fujita, Kumi Ishikawa, Yoshitaka Ishisaki & Hiromi Seta

  19. Department of Physics, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan

    Yasushi Fukazawa & Hiromitsu Takahashi

  20. Department of Physics, Fujita Health University, Aichi, Japan

    Akihiro Furuzawa

  21. Department of Astronomy and Physics, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Luigi Gallo

  22. Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Javier A. García

  23. European Space Agency (ESA), European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), Noordwijk, The Netherlands

    Matteo Guainazzi

  24. Faculty of Engineering, University of Miyazaki, Miyazaki, Japan

    Isamu Hatsukade, Koji Mori & Makoto Yamauchi

  25. RIKEN Nishina Center, Saitama, Japan

    Yuto Ichinohe & Toru Tamagawa

  26. Leiden Observatory, University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Jelle Kaastra

  27. Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Erin Kara & Eric D. Miller

  28. Department of Physics, Saitama University, Saitama, Japan

    Satoru Katsuda, Kosuke Sato, Mai Takeo, Makoto Tashiro & Yukikatsu Terada

  29. Department of Physics, Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan

    Shunji Kitamoto, Makoto Sawada & Shinya Yamada

  30. Faculty of Physics, Tokyo University of Science, Tokyo, Japan

    Shogo Kobayashi & Kyoko Matsushita

  31. Faculty of Science and Technology, Tokyo University of Science, Chiba, Japan

    Takayoshi Kohmura & Yuusuke Uchida

  32. Department of Electronic Information Systems, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Saitama, Japan

    Aya Kubota

  33. Department of Earth and Space Science, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

    Hironori Matsumoto, Hirokazu Odaka & Hiroshi Tsunemi

  34. Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

    Dan McCammon

  35. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Brian McNamara & Julian Meunier

  36. Department of Physics, Nagoya University, Aichi, Japan

    Ikuyuki Mitsuishi, Kazuhiro Nakazawa & Kazutaka Yamaoka

  37. Science Research Education Unit, University of Teacher Education Fukuoka, Fukuoka, Japan

    Misaki Mizumoto

  38. Hiroshima Astrophysical Science Center, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan

    Tsunefumi Mizuno

  39. Department of Data Science, Tohoku Gakuin University, Miyagi, Japan

    Hiroshi Murakami

  40. College of Science and Engineering, Kanto Gakuin University, Kanagawa, Japan

    Hiroshi Nakajima

  41. European Space Agency (ESA), European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), Madrid, Spain

    Jan-Uwe Ness

  42. Department of Science, Faculty of Science and Engineering, KINDAI University, Osaka, Japan

    Kumiko Nobukawa

  43. Department of Teacher Training and School Education, Nara University of Education, Nara, Japan

    Masayoshi Nobukawa

  44. Astronomical Institute, Tohoku University, Miyagi, Japan

    Hirofumi Noda

  45. Department of Physics, Nara Women’s University, Nara, Japan

    Naomi Ota & Shigeo Yamauchi

  46. International Center for Quantum-field Measurement Systems for Studies of the Universe and Particles (QUP)/High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), Ibaraki, Japan

    Kosuke Sato

  47. School of Science and Technology, Meiji University, Kanagawa, Japan

    Toshiki Sato

  48. Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Andrew Szymkowiak

  49. Department of Physics, Konan University, Hyogo, Japan

    Takaaki Tanaka

  50. Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Kagoshima University, Kagoshima, Japan

    Atsushi Tanimoto

  51. Department of Physics, Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan

    Yohko Tsuboi & Tomokage Yoneyama

  52. Faculty of Education, Shizuoka University, Shizuoka, Japan

    Hideki Uchiyama

  53. Department of Astronomy, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Yoshihiro Ueda

  54. Nihon Fukushi University, Shizuoka, Japan

    Shinichiro Uno

  55. Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Jacco Vink

  56. Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

    Satoshi Yamada

  57. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Mihoko Yukita

  58. Department of Physics and Astronoomy, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    Ian Drury, Lior Shefler & Phillip C. Stancil

  59. Département de Physique, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo & Benjamin Vigneron

  60. Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Institute of Science and Engineering, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan

    Shutaro Ueda

  61. Advanced Research Center for Space Science and Technology, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan

    Shutaro Ueda

  62. Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA), Taipei, Taiwan

    Shutaro Ueda

  63. Department of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia

    Congyao Zhang

  64. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Congyao Zhang, Annie Heinrich & Irina Zhuravleva

Consortia

The XRISM Collaboration

  • Marc Audard
  • , Hisamitsu Awaki
  • , Ralf Ballhausen
  • , Aya Bamba
  • , Ehud Behar
  • , Rozenn Boissay-Malaquin
  • , Laura Brenneman
  • , Gregory V. Brown
  • , Lia Corrales
  • , Elisa Costantini
  • , Renata Cumbee
  • , María Díaz Trigo
  • , Chris Done
  • , Tadayasu Dotani
  • , Ken Ebisawa
  • , Megan E. Eckart
  • , Dominique Eckert
  • , Satoshi Eguchi
  • , Teruaki Enoto
  • , Yuichiro Ezoe
  • , Adam Foster
  • , Ryuichi Fujimoto
  • , Yutaka Fujita
  • , Yasushi Fukazawa
  • , Kotaro Fukushima
  • , Akihiro Furuzawa
  • , Luigi Gallo
  • , Javier A. García
  • , Liyi Gu
  • , Matteo Guainazzi
  • , Kouichi Hagino
  • , Kenji Hamaguchi
  • , Isamu Hatsukade
  • , Katsuhiro Hayashi
  • , Takayuki Hayashi
  • , Natalie Hell
  • , Edmund Hodges-Kluck
  • , Ann Hornschemeier
  • , Yuto Ichinohe
  • , Daiki Ishi
  • , Manabu Ishida
  • , Kumi Ishikawa
  • , Yoshitaka Ishisaki
  • , Jelle Kaastra
  • , Timothy Kallman
  • , Erin Kara
  • , Satoru Katsuda
  • , Yoshiaki Kanemaru
  • , Richard Kelley
  • , Caroline Kilbourne
  • , Shunji Kitamoto
  • , Shogo Kobayashi
  • , Takayoshi Kohmura
  • , Aya Kubota
  • , Maurice Leutenegger
  • , Michael Loewenstein
  • , Yoshitomo Maeda
  • , Maxim Markevitch
  • , Hironori Matsumoto
  • , Kyoko Matsushita
  • , Dan McCammon
  • , Brian McNamara
  • , François Mernier
  • , Eric D. Miller
  • , Jon M. Miller
  • , Ikuyuki Mitsuishi
  • , Misaki Mizumoto
  • , Tsunefumi Mizuno
  • , Koji Mori
  • , Koji Mukai
  • , Hiroshi Murakami
  • , Richard Mushotzky
  • , Hiroshi Nakajima
  • , Kazuhiro Nakazawa
  • , Jan-Uwe Ness
  • , Kumiko Nobukawa
  • , Masayoshi Nobukawa
  • , Hirofumi Noda
  • , Hirokazu Odaka
  • , Shoji Ogawa
  • , Anna Ogorzalek
  • , Takashi Okajima
  • , Naomi Ota
  • , Stephane Paltani
  • , Robert Petre
  • , Paul Plucinsky
  • , Frederick S. Porter
  • , Katja Pottschmidt
  • , Kosuke Sato
  • , Toshiki Sato
  • , Makoto Sawada
  • , Hiromi Seta
  • , Megumi Shidatsu
  • , Aurora Simionescu
  • , Randall Smith
  • , Hiromasa Suzuki
  • , Andrew Szymkowiak
  • , Hiromitsu Takahashi
  • , Mai Takeo
  • , Toru Tamagawa
  • , Keisuke Tamura
  • , Takaaki Tanaka
  • , Atsushi Tanimoto
  • , Makoto Tashiro
  • , Yukikatsu Terada
  • , Yuichi Terashima
  • , Yohko Tsuboi
  • , Masahiro Tsujimoto
  • , Hiroshi Tsunemi
  • , Takeshi G. Tsuru
  • , Ayşegül Tümer
  • , Hiroyuki Uchida
  • , Nagomi Uchida
  • , Yuusuke Uchida
  • , Hideki Uchiyama
  • , Yoshihiro Ueda
  • , Shinichiro Uno
  • , Jacco Vink
  • , Shin Watanabe
  • , Brian J. Williams
  • , Satoshi Yamada
  • , Shinya Yamada
  • , Hiroya Yamaguchi
  • , Kazutaka Yamaoka
  • , Noriko Yamasaki
  • , Makoto Yamauchi
  • , Shigeo Yamauchi
  • , Tahir Yaqoob
  • , Tomokage Yoneyama
  • , Tessei Yoshida
  • , Mihoko Yukita
  • , Ian Drury
  • , Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo
  • , Julian Meunier
  • , Kostas Migkas
  • , Lior Shefler
  • , Phillip C. Stancil
  • , Nhut Truong
  • , Shutaro Ueda
  • , Benjamin Vigneron
  • , John ZuHone
  • , Congyao Zhang
  • , Annie Heinrich
  • , Irina Zhuravleva
  •  & Elena Bellomi

Contributions

C.Z., A. Heinrich and I.Z. performed the data analysis, explored systematic uncertainties, interpreted the results and prepared the paper. C.Z. also developed controlled simulations of stratified turbulence. E. Bellomi developed the tailored AGN feedback and sloshing simulations. As the leader of the Perseus cluster target team in the XRISM Science Team, I.Z. oversaw the work on the project. F.S.P. and M.E.E. calibrated the energy scale and gain and estimated calibration uncertainties. A.O., F.M., S. Ueda, J.M. and Y. Ichinohe contributed to the Resolve data analysis. M. Markevitch, A.O., K.F., S. Kobayashi, K. Matsushita, R.M. and Y. Fukazawa contributed to resolving the AGN contribution in spectral modelling. C.K. assisted with the NXB modelling and contributed to related discussions. T. Yaqoob provided valuable insights into the XRISM mirror uncertainties. B.V. and J.H.-L. provided the SITELLE analysis of the multiphase gas. E. Bellomi, M.E.E., Y. Fujita, J.H.-L., Y. Ichinohe, M. Markevitch, K. Matsushita, B.M., F.M., A.O., N.O., F.S.P., A. Simionescu, P.C.S., N.T., S. Ueda, B.V. and J.Z. reviewed the paper and contributed to discussions. The scientific goals of XRISM were discussed and developed over 7 years by the XRISM Science Team, all members of which are authors of this paper. All the instruments were prepared by the joint efforts of the team.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Congyao Zhang, Annie Heinrich, Irina Zhuravleva or Elena Bellomi.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 X-ray structures within the Perseus core and default radial binning scheme adopted for the analysis.

(a) Residual X-ray/Chandra image of the Perseus cluster in the 2−8 keV band, with arrows highlighting prominent structures relevant to our analysis. (b) The color pixels and grey circles/annuli show detector and sky regions (No. 1–6 from inner to outer), respectively, with the black dashed circle marking the innermost sky region. White contours illustrate the regions that contribute 90% photons to each pointing based on our SIXTE simulations.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Gas radial velocity profiles for varied binning schemes (a) and spatial-spectral mixing (b).

Formatting is equivalent to Fig. 2. In panel (a), black triangles correspond to the full-FOV profile (broad radial bins), red circles to the nominal profile of Fig. 2, and blue squares to the profile of Fig. 3 (narrow radial bins). In panel (b), the red circles are unchanged from Fig. 2, while blue squares/black triangles show profiles where off-axis ARFs, and therefore SSM, are increased/decreased by 30% (Supplementary Information).

Extended Data Fig. 3 Constraints on AGN parameters: photon index Γ vs. flux between 2−10 keV.

The contours indicate the implied 1, 2, 3σ parameter regimes from the two independent approaches utilizing Chandra spectra for the ICM component. Pink contours are based on the ratio of fluxes between sky regions 1/2 and 1/3 in the 4−6 keV band, which lacks strong emission lines, while blue contours are from the measurements of the equivalent width of Fe He-α line complex (Methods). For modeling the ICM in this work, we fixed the AGN flux at 31 × 10−12 erg s−1 cm−2, shown as the black point with 1σ error bars of the photon index.

Extended Data Fig. 4 XRISM/Resolve spectra from detector regions 1-3 and their best-fit models.

For each region, we show a broad-band spectrum from 3–11 keV and a detailed view of the Fe XXV He-α triplet on the right. Pink, orange, blue, and green curves represent the best-fit models of the NXB, the combined scattered ICM, the ICM, and the AGN components, respectively. The cyan curves on the right show the Fe XXV He-α w line Gaussian component, while the red curves show the total models. Residuals normalized by the statistical errors, i.e., (data-model)/error, are displayed in the lower panels with two different binning schemes: black points correspond to the binning with minimum significance \({\sigma }_{\min }=3\), while purple points show the binning with \({\sigma }_{\min }=20\).

Extended Data Fig. 5 XRISM/Resolve spectra from detector regions 4-6 and their best-fit models.

Notations are equivalent to Extended Data Fig. 4.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Statistical 1σ uncertainties for the velocity maps presented in Fig. 3.

Velocity dispersion errors are shown on the left, while the bulk velocity errors are on the right. All other notations are the same as in Fig. 3.

Extended Data Fig. 7 Effective length of the Perseus cluster.

(a) A sketch of the effective length concept in a stratified cluster atmosphere. The length along the LOS, which corresponds to the region size that contributes most to the measured flux/spectra, increases with the projected distance from the cluster center. (b) A radial profile of the normalized X-ray surface brightness in Perseus, adapted from11, is shown in black. The effective length, defined as the region size where 50% of the flux is collected, is shown with the red curve. The shaded red region indicates the scales associated with 40–60% of the flux contribution. The blue dashed curve represents the X-ray-weighted LOS length scale.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Numerical simulations of stratified turbulence with various driving scales.

(a) Projected velocity dispersion along the LOS for the simulation run with the injection scale ℓinj = 500 kpc, weighted with (left) and without (right) X-ray emissivity, (b) Same as the panel (a) but for the run with ℓinj = 50 kpc. (c) Comparisons between the simulated emissivity-weighted velocity dispersion radial profiles and the XRISM measurement (see also Fig. 2). See Methods for the description of the simulations.

Extended Data Fig. 9 Azimuthally averaged velocity dispersion centered on the cluster core from the tailored sloshing simulations compared with the XRISM observations.

Red crosses show XRISM’s LOS velocity dispersion presented in this work. The shaded regions indicate the azimuthally-averaged X-ray emissivity-weighted velocity dispersion radial profiles from the simulations including only sloshing (blue) and sloshing plus AGN jet feedback (violet). Both simulations share the same initial conditions and are shown at the same epoch. This figure is a simplified adaptation of Fig. 1 from ref. 75.

Extended Data Fig. 10 Modeled radial velocity dispersion profiles produced by propagating sound waves.

(a) Assuming conserved energy flux Fsw ( ≡ αFagn) of the sound waves starting from the cluster radius r0 powered by the central AGN (Fagn = 5 × 1044 erg s−1). (b) Assuming sound waves compensate a fraction (β) of cooling loss everywhere within the radius \({r}_{\max }\). Red points are our measured velocity dispersion, same as in Fig. 2.

Extended Data Table 1 Best-fit parameters of the ICM
Full size table

Supplementary information

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The XRISM Collaboration. Disentangling multiple gas kinematic drivers in the Perseus galaxy cluster. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-10017-x

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