Heating the Bubbly Gas of Galaxy Clusters with Weak Shocks and Sound Waves

Using hydrodynamic simulations and a technique to extract the rotational component of the velocity field, we show how bubbles of relativistic gas inflated by AGN jets in galaxy clusters act as a catalyst, transforming the energy carried by sound and shock waves into heat. The energy is stored in a vortex field around the bubbles, which can subsequently be dissipated. The efficiency of this process is set mainly by the fraction of the cluster volume filled by (sub-) kiloparsec-scale filaments and bubbles of relativistic plasma.