MNRAS 000, 1–17 (2017) Preprint 1 May 2018 Compiled using MNRAS LATEX style file v3.

Radio observations of the double-relic galaxy cluster Abell

1240

D. N. Hoang1? , T. W. Shimwell2,1 , R. J. van Weeren1 , H. T. Intema1 ,

H. J. A. Röttgering1 , F. Andrade-Santos3 , H. Akamatsu4 , A. Bonafede5,6 ,
G. Brunetti5 , W. A. Dawson7 , N. Golovich8,7 , P. N. Best9 , A. Botteon10,5 ,
M. Brüggen6 , R. Cassano5 , F. de Gasperin1 , M. Hoeft11 , A. Stroe12 † and
arXiv:1804.11352v1 [astro-ph.HE] 30 Apr 2018

G. J. White13,14
(Affiliations are listed at the end of the paper)

Accepted 2018. Received 2018; in original form 2018

ABSTRACT
We present LOFAR 120 − 168 MHz images of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 1240
that hosts double radio relics. In combination with the GMRT 595−629 MHz and VLA
2 − 4 GHz data, we characterised the spectral and polarimetric properties of the radio
emission. The spectral indices for the relics steepen from their outer edges towards
the cluster centre and the electric field vectors are approximately perpendicular to the
major axes of the relics. The results are consistent with the picture that these relics
trace large-scale shocks propagating outwards during the merger. Assuming diffusive
shock acceleration (DSA), we obtain shock Mach numbers of M = 2.4 and 2.3 for
the northern and southern shocks, respectively. For M . 3 shocks, a pre-existing
population of mildly relativistic electrons is required to explain the brightness of the
relics due to the high (> 10 per cent) particle acceleration efficiency required. However,
for M & 4 shocks the required efficiency is & 1% and & 0.5%, respectively, which
is low enough for shock acceleration directly from the thermal pool. We used the
fractional polarization to constrain the viewing angle to > 53 ± 3◦ and > 39 ± 5◦ for the
northern and southern shocks, respectively. We found no evidence for diffuse emission
in the cluster central region. If the halo spans the entire region between the relics
(∼ 1.8 Mpc) our upper limit on the power is P1.4 GHz = (1.4 ± 0.6) × 1023 W Hz−1 which
is approximately equal to the anticipated flux from a cluster of this mass. However,
if the halo is smaller than this, our constraints on the power imply that the halo is
underluminous.
Key words: galaxies: clusters: individual (Abell 1240) – galaxies: clusters: intra-
cluster medium – large-scale structure of Universe – radiation mechanisms: non-
thermal – diffuse radiation – shock waves

1 INTRODUCTION large-scale motions (i.e. shocks and turbulence) and mag-

netic field amplification, a small fraction of it is converted
Massive galaxy clusters consist of hundreds to thousands of
to non-thermal energy of relativistic particles that perme-
galaxies and grow hierarchically through a sequence of merg-
ate the ICM. In the presence of the large-scale, ∼ µG clus-
ers of smaller clusters or groups of galaxies. Merging events
ter magnetic field, these relativistic electrons, that have a
between massive clusters release an enormous amount of
Lorentz factor ∼ 103 − 105 , emit synchrotron emission that is
gravitational energy (∼ 1063 − 1064 ergs) to the intra-cluster
observable in the radio band (see, e.g., Blandford & Eichler
medium (ICM) over a few Gyrs (e.g. Hoeft et al. 2008;
1987; Feretti et al. 2012; Brunetti & Jones 2014).
Brunetti & Jones 2014). Most of this energy is transferred
to thermal energy by heating of the ICM plasma. Through Depending on the morphology, location and polarimet-
ric properties, the diffuse radio sources in galaxy clusters are
? E-mail: [email protected] primarily classified as radio haloes or relics. Radio relics are
† ESO fellow elongated diffuse sources observed at the periphery of galaxy

© 2017 The Authors

2 D. N. Hoang et al.
clusters; some relics have been detected with a high fraction are expected to be generated by shocks and turbulence, re-
of linear polarization at ∼ GHz frequencies (i.e. from ∼ 10% spectively. Due to the diametrically opposite locations of the
up to 70%) and distinctive spectral index gradients across double relics, these shocks are thought to be caused by head-
their structure. Radio haloes are cluster-wide sources that on binary mergers of roughly equal masses merging on/close
roughly follow the X-ray emission and are observed to be to the plane of the sky (e.g. van Weeren et al. 2011a; Nuza
unpolarized down to a few percent (see, e.g., Feretti et al. et al. 2017). Hence, double-relic clusters provide a unique
2012; Kierdorf et al. 2017). environment for studies of particle (re-)acceleration with-
The formation mechanism of radio haloes and relics has out the complication of projection effects (i.e. to minimise
not been fully understood. The prominent model for the gen- a mixture of relativistic electron populations along the line-
eration of radio haloes is the turbulent re-acceleration model of-sight (LOS); Stroe et al. 2013). Furthermore, since the
where relativistic electrons are re-energized by magnetohy- possibility to have seed populations of mildly relativistic
drodynamical turbulence during cluster mergers (Brunetti electrons is likely to correlate with the distribution of aged
et al. 2001; Petrosian 2001). Another model has been pro- AGN, these double relics might provide hints as to whether
posed to explain the existence of radio haloes such as the relics are formed by acceleration directly from the thermal
hadronic model in which relativistic electrons are secondary pool or from fossil plasma pre-existing in the ICM.
products of proton-proton collisions (e.g. Dennison 1980). Abell 1240 (z = 0.1948; hereafter A1240) is a binary
However, the secondary model has difficulties because of the merging galaxy cluster (M500 = (3.7 ± 0.4) × 1014 M ; Planck
non-detection of γ-rays by the Fermi γ-ray Space Telescope Collaboration et al. 2016). A1240 was first observed to host
(e.g. Jeltema et al. 2009; Ackermann et al. 2010; Jeltema & faint diffuse emission located on the opposite sides of the
Profumo 2011; Brunetti et al. 2012; Zandanel & Ando 2014; cluster by Kempner & Sarazin (2001). Follow-up observa-
Ackermann et al. 2016; Brunetti et al. 2017). The secondary tions by Bonafede et al. (2009) confirmed the existence of
model is further challenged by the large amount of energy the radio relics (labelled as A1240-1 and A1240-2 for the
that is required to explain the steep spectra of some radio northern and southern relics, respectively) and found that
haloes (e.g. Brunetti 2004; Brunetti et al. 2008). However, they are elongated over ∼ 650 kpc and ∼ 1250 kpc in the
the observed radio emission may be caused by a combina- east-west direction. Across the width of A1240-1, the spec-
tion of the mechanisms in which the secondary electrons are tral indices1 steepen from −1.1 to −1.6 towards the clus-
re-accelerated by merger turbulence (Brunetti & Blasi 2005; ter centre. Polarized emission was observed from the relics
Brunetti & Lazarian 2011; Pinzke et al. 2017). at 1.4 GHz and the electric field vectors are approximately
Radio relics have been proposed to be the synchrotron perpendicular to the major axes of the relics, indicating the
emission from large-scale shocks that are generated during alignment of the ICM magnetic fields. Assuming a relativis-
cluster mergers (e.g. Enßlin et al. 1998). Relativistic elec- tic electron energy of Lorentz factor ≥ 100 with the spec-
trons gain energy either from the direct acceleration of the trum of N(p) ∝ p−δ (where δ = −2αint , αint A1240-1
= −1.2
ICM thermal electrons or from the re-acceleration of fossil and αintA1240-2
= −1.3) and equipartition energy conditions,
plasma remnants of active galactic nuclei (AGN) through Bonafede et al. (2009) estimated the equipartition magnetic
Fermi-I DSA (e.g. Giacintucci et al. 2008; Markevitch et al. field of 2.4 µG and 2.5 µG for A1240-1 and A1240-2, respec-
2005). Observational evidence associating the formation of tively. Due to their properties (i.e. location, morphology,
radio relics with cluster merger shocks have been observed spectral gradients and polarization properties), the relics
in a large number of merging clusters (e.g. van Weeren et al. were interpreted as synchrotron emission from large-scale
2010; Bonafede et al. 2012; Stroe et al. 2013; de Gasperin shocks that were generated by a cluster merger in the plane
et al. 2015; van Weeren et al. 2016c or see Feretti et al. 2012 of the sky and are moving outwards. Using the integrated
for a review). The evidence includes (i) an arc-like morphol- spectral indices, Bonafede et al. (2009) estimated the Mach
ogy of some relics, which is consistent with an edge-on/close numbers of Mint = 3.3 ± 0.2 for A1240-1 and Mint = 2.8 ± 0.3
to edge-on view of 3D shock waves, (ii) spectral gradients for A1240-2.
or spectral curvature variations across the width of relics, In the optical band, Barrena et al. (2009) studied the
suggesting that the relativistic electrons gain energy at the dynamical properties of A1240 using spectroscopic redshifts
shock fronts and lose their energy after shock passage and from 145 galaxies. A1240 was found to have a bimodal struc-
(iii) high degree of linear polarization, indicating a magnetic ture with clumps of galaxies separated in the north-south di-
field aligned within the shock plane. The distribution of size, rection. The galaxy clumps have a relative rest-frame LOS
shape and location of relics agree well with those of merger velocity of Vrf = 390 km s−1 at a projected distance of 1.2 h70
−1

shocks in cosmological simulations (e.g. Nuza et al. 2017). Mpc. The galaxy clumps were estimated to have passed 0.3
Alternatively, the re-acceleration model requires pre-existing Gyr ago. Approximately 12 0 (∼ 2.3 Mpc) to the south of
populations of mildly relativistic electrons to be present in A1240 is Abell 1237 (hereafter A1237; z = 0.1935, Barrena
the regions of the shocks and there is evidence for this in a et al. 2009) that is thought to be in-falling to A1240. Barrena
few cases (e.g. van Weeren et al. 2013; Bonafede et al. 2014; et al. (2009) found no signature of peculiar displacement of
Shimwell et al. 2015; Botteon et al. 2016a; van Weeren et al. A1240 towards the direction of A1237 and suggested that
2017). A1237 and A1240 are in the pre-merging stage.
Galaxy clusters that host double radio relics on diamet- In this paper, we present Low Frequency Array (LO-
rically opposite sides of the clusters are some of the most FAR) 120 − 187 MHz observations of A1240. LOFAR’s sen-
interesting cases to study particle (re-)acceleration at Mpc sitivity to large-scale emission coupled with its high-angular
scales. Only 17 double-relics clusters have been detected to
date (Bonafede et al. 2017 and references therein). In these
rare energetic merging clusters both the relics and the halo 1 The convention S ∝ ν α is used in this paper

MNRAS 000, 1–17 (2017)

 Radio observations of Abell 1240 3
resolution helps us to study the extended diffuse emission calibrator source(s). The direction-dependent gain and TEC
from A1240 in detail. Furthermore, LOFAR observations at (total electron content) solutions for each facet were derived
low frequencies 6 200 MHz allow us to detect steep spec- by self-calibrating on selected calibrator sources and then
trum emission such as from radio haloes that are generated applied to all other sources in the facet. The facet sky mod-
during minor mergers or mergers of low-mass clusters. In els, that were corrected for the direction-dependent effects,
combination with archival Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope were progressively subtracted from the data. The procedure
(GMRT) 595 − 629 MHz and Karl G. Jansky Very Large Ar- was repeated until only the last facet, containing A1240,
ray (VLA) 2 − 4 GHz data, we study spatial variations of was left in the data. The facet calibrator (i.e. B3 1121+435
spectral indices of the radio sources in A1240 across a wide at RA=11:24:32.043, Dec=+43:15:42.77) that was used to
frequency range. We use the VLA data to study the polar- calibrate the facet containing the cluster has a flux of 2.91
ized emission from the cluster relics. Jy. As the distance between the facet calibrator and A1240
Throughout this paper, we assume H0 = 70 km s−1 is 14 0 , the ionospheric and instrumental phase corrections
Mpc , Ω M = 0.3 and ΩΛ = 0.7. In this cosmology, 1 0 corre-
−1 should be similar to those towards the direction of A1240.
sponds to ∼ 194h70−1 kpc at the cluster redshift of z = 0.1948. The data reduction was performed with the facet-
calibration pipeline2 . The pipeline exploits DPPP (LOFAR
Default PreProcessing Pipeline) for data editing (i.e. flag-
ging, averaging, concatenating), BBS (BlackBoard Seflcal,
2 OBSERVATIONS AND DATA REDUCTION Pandey et al. 2009) for calibration and WSClean (W-Stacking
Clean, Offringa et al. 2014) for imaging. To obtain final con-
2.1 LOFAR 143 MHz tinuum images of A1240, the calibrated data were decon-
A1240 was observed with LOFAR for 8 hours on March 22, volved in CASA (Common Astronomy Software Applications;
2016 as part of the LOFAR Two-meter Sky Survey (LoTSS, McMullin et al. 2007, see Subsec. 2.4).
Shimwell et al. 2017). A1240 was located at an angular dis-
tance of ∼ 55 0 from the LoTSS grid pointing centre (pointing
2.2 GMRT 612 MHz
P170+42 of project LC4 034), where the primary beam sen-
sitivity is ∼ 78 percent of the value at the pointing centre. The GMRT 595 − 629 MHz observations of A1240 were per-
The observations used the High-Band Antennas (120 − 187 formed on July 2, 2011 for 6 hours (project code: 20 004,
MHz) on 48 core, 14 remote and 9 international stations. PI: A. Bonafede). During the target observations, the radio
However, to obtain cluster maps at spatial resolutions of source 1035+564 was observed for 5 minutes every about 40
> 8 00 , we used only data from baselines that have uv-range minutes and was used as a phase calibrator. For flux cali-
between 15 λ and 66 kλ. For calibration purposes, 3C 196 bration, two bright radio sources 3C 147 and 3C 286 were
was observed for 10 minutes before the target field. Details observed before and after the target observations. The ob-
of the observations are listed in Table 1. servation details are given in Table 1.
We used the facet calibration scheme to calibrate the The GMRT 612 MHz data were reduced with the
target data for both direction-independent and direction- Software Peeling and Atmospheric Modelling (SPAM) pack-
dependent effects. Details of the facet calibration are given age (Intema et al. 2009) that performed both direction-
in van Weeren et al. (2016a); Williams et al. (2016). But for independent and direction-dependent calibration. The
completeness, we briefly describe the procedure below. direction-independent calibration using 3C 147 included
During the direction-independent calibration part, the flagging RFI, correcting initial phase offsets between the
target data were flagged for radio frequency interference parallel-handed correlations, antenna-based phase delay and
(RFI) using AOFlagger (Offringa et al. 2012) and time peri- amplitude calibration. The flux scale of the primary calibra-
ods where the contamination from bright radio sources in the tor 3C 147 was set according to the Scaife & Heald (2012)
sidelobes (i.e. Cassiopeia A, Hercules A, Taurus A and Virgo flux scale. Then a phase calibration was performed using
A) were also flagged. The amplitude gains, initial clock and a wide-field sky model. In the direction-dependent calibra-
XX-YY phase offsets were derived from gain solutions of 3C tion, SPAM iteratively solved for amplitude and phase gains
196. Here the calibration solutions of 3C 196 were obtained towards multiple directions in the target field. The calibra-
by calibrating a 4-Gaussian component source model that tion solutions were used to fit a 2D ionospheric model and
has an integrated flux of 83.1 Jy at 150 MHz in agreement the derived ionospheric corrections were then applied to the
with the Scaife & Heald (2012) absolute flux scale. target data. To obtain final images, the direction-dependent
To prepare for the direction-dependent calibration, calibrated data in the direction of A1240 were deconvolved
“blank” data sets for the target field were made by sub- with CASA (see Subsec. 2.4).
tracting all sources within a ∼ 30◦ radius of the field centre
using the direction independent calibration solutions. The
CLEAN components used for the subtraction were obtained 2.3 VLA 3 GHz
from imaging at resolutions of ∼ 40 00 and ∼ 2 0 . The VLA S-band observations were performed in C and D
In the direction-dependent calibration part, we aimed configuration on Oct. 10, 2014 and Oct. 09, 2015, respec-
to obtain thermal-noise limited images of the cluster. To tively (project: 14B-157, PI: W. Dawson). In each configu-
achieve this, the ionospheric distortions and beam errors to- ration the array was separately pointed at each radio relic.
wards the target direction were corrected and the contam- The observations used 16 spectral windows, each of which
ination from nearby sources was minimized following the
facet calibration procedure. The target field was divided into
15 regions (called facets), each containing bright, compact 2 https://github.com/tammojan/facet-calibration

MNRAS 000, 1–17 (2017)

4 D. N. Hoang et al.

Table 1. LOFAR, GMRT and VLA observations

LOFAR 143 MHz GMRT 612 MHz VLA 3 GHz

Pointing (RA, Dec) 170h 48m 54.0s , +42d 10m 13.08s 11h 23m 32.1s , +43d 06m 31.9s 11h 23m 29.0s , +43d 09m 42.0s (A1240-1)
11h 23m 35.0s , +43d 01m 12.9s (A1240-2)
Configuration N/A N/A C, D
Observation date March 22, 2016 July 2, 2011 October 10, 2014 (C)
October 09, 2015 (D)
On-source time (hr) 8.0 6.0 1.1 (C), 3.4 (D)
Freq. coverage (GHz) 0.120 − 0.187 0.595 − 0.629 2−4
Usable bandwidth (GHz) 0.043 0.0333 1.992
Channel width (MHz) 0.0122 0.13 2
Integration time (s) 1 16 ∼5
Correlation XX, XY, YX, YY RR, LL RR, RL, LR, LL
Number of antennas 62 28 51

was split into 64 channels, and covered the 2 − 4 GHz band- 2008) was employed to account for the non-coplanarity of
width in total. An overview of the observations is given in the baselines across the sky. Specially depending on the im-
Table 1. age size, wprojplanes = 448 was used for the LOFAR data
Following van Weeren et al. (2016b), we separately pro- and wprojplanes = 384 was set for the WSRT and GMRT
cessed the target data for each configuration/pointing with data.
the CASA package. The target data were Hanning smoothed To optimise for imaging on various different angular
and corrected for elevation-dependent gains and antenna po- scales, the LOFAR, GMRT and VLA uv-data were weighted
sition offsets. The RFI was flagged with the automatic flag- using Briggs’s robust weighting (Briggs 1995) in combina-
gers in CASA and AOFlagger (Offringa et al. 2012). The an- tion with uvtapers to down-weighting the outer baselines
tenna delays and bandpass were derived using a model of (see Table 2). The final LOFAR and VLA images were cor-
3C 286 that is set to the Perley & Butler (2013) flux scale rected for the attenuation of the primary beams that were
and has an uncertainty of a few percent (Perley & But- generated with AWImager (Tasse et al. 2013) and CASA (Mc-
ler 2013). The cross-hand delays were solved using 3C 286, Mullin et al. 2007), respectively. The GMRT 612 MHz im-
assuming a fractional polarization of 11% and a RL-phase ages were also corrected for primary beam attenuation3 ,
difference of 66◦ . The polarization leakage terms for every
channel were determined from J1407+2827 which served as 3.486 2 47.749 4 35.203 6 10.399 8
a low polarization leakage calibrator. After the calibration A(x) = 1 − x + x − x + x , (1)
103 107 1010 1013
parameters were derived they were transferred to the target
data. The phase calibration of the target field was calcu- where x = f × θ, here θ is angular distance in arcmin to the
lated every 20 minutes using J1146+3958. To improve the pointing centre, and f = 0.612 GHz is the frequency of the
fidelity of the target field image, self-calibration loops were GMRT observations.
then performed. Finally, the calibrated data for the C and
D configurations that have the same pointing centres were
2.5 Spectral index measurements
concatenated in uv-plane and were used to make continuum
images (see Subsec. 2.4). To make spectral index maps of A1240 we combined LO-
FAR 143 MHz, GMRT 612 MHz and VLA 3 GHz contin-
uum images. To measure approximately the same spatial
2.4 Continuum imaging scales of emission, we selected a common uv-range (0.2−41.0
kλ) for the data sets when making the total intensity im-
To map the diffuse source structure with the wide-band data ages. A common Briggs weighting (robust = −0.25) was
sets we exploited multi-scale and multi-frequency synthesis applied to the data sets. It is noted that uniform weight-
(MS − MFS) in CASA (McMullin et al. 2007; Cornwell 2008; Rau ing, or attempting to directly match the uv-coverage, helps
& Cornwell 2011). The LOFAR, GMRT and VLA calibrated to accurately compare interferometric images. However, such
data were separately CLEANed with MS − MFS to model the weighting of the uv-data significantly increases the noise lev-
complex emission from A1240. The scales used in the decon- els of the continuum images. Instead, we used the Briggs
volution are multiscale = [0, 3, 7, 25, 60, 150] × pixels, where weighting to increase signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the
the zero scale is for modelling point sources and the larger sources and attempted to ensure that the native resolu-
scales are for sampling the diffuse emission. Due to the wide tion of the images from the different arrays was equal by
fractional bandwidth of the VLA observations the primary applying different uv-tapers. To obtain an angular resolu-
beam considerably varies across the band and three Taylor tion of 20 00 we used an outer uv-taper of 10 00 , 17 00 and
terms (nterms = 3) were used to model the frequency de- 9 00 for the LOFAR, GMRT and VLA data, respectively.
pendence of the radio emission. nterms = 2 and 1 were used The native resolution with these imaging parameters was
for the LOFAR and GMRT data that have bandwidths of
43 MHz and 33 MHz, respectively. Additionally a wide-field
algorithm (W − projection, Cornwell et al. 2005; Cornwell 3 GMRT User’s manual

MNRAS 000, 1–17 (2017)

 Radio observations of Abell 1240 5

Table 2. Imaging parameters that were used to make images of A1240 and the image properties.

Data uv-range Robust a θFWHM σrms Stokes Fig.

(kλ) (outertaper) (00 × 00 , P A) (µJy beam−1 )

LOFAR 143 MHz 0.2 − 66 −0.25 (500 ) 15 × 10 (87◦ ) 165 I 1

0.2 − 66 0.10 (2500 ) 41 × 36 (13◦ ) 410 I 3
0.2 − 41 −0.25 (1000 ) 21 × 21 b 280 I 4c

GMRT 612 MHz 0.2 − 41 −0.25 (1700 ) 21 × 21 b 175 I 4c

VLA 3 GHz 0.2 − 41 −0.25 (900 ) 21 × 21 b 17 I 4c

0.2 − 41 0.00 18.5 × 14.5 (85◦ ) 13 I 6
0.2 − 41 0.00 18.5 × 14.5 (85◦ ) ∼ 6.4 Q 6d
0.2 − 41 0.00 18.5 × 14.5 (85◦ ) ∼ 6.5 U 6d

Notes: a: Briggs weighting of visibilities; b: smoothed; c : spectral index map; d: F vector map

19.7 00 × 14.9 00 (position angle of P A = 86.3◦ ) for the LOFAR The polarization angle calculated from Eq. 2 was fur-
image, 19.2 00 × 14.0 00 (P A = 24.4◦ ) for the GMRT image and ther corrected for the Faraday rotation caused by the Galac-
20.0 00 × 15.8 00 (P A = −84.4◦ ) for the VLA image. These total tic magnetic field (i.e. φA1240 = φEq. 2 − φGalactic ). Given the
intensity maps were smoothed to an identical resolution of mean Galactic rotation measure (RM) of 9.4 rad/m2 towards
21 00 , aligned and regrided. The LOFAR, GMRT and VLA the direction of A1240 (Oppermann et al. 2012), the Galac-
images have noise levels of σrms = 280, 175 and 17 µJy/beam, tic Faraday rotation (φGalactic = RM × λ2 ) is 12◦ and 3◦ at
respectively. The spectral indices were calculated for each the lower and higher edges of the 2 − 4 GHz band, respec-
pixel by fitting the > 3σrms pixels in at least two images tively. Since the polarized emission map was made with full
with a power-law function, S ∝ ν α . To estimate the spectral bandwidth data that has the central frequency at 3 GHz, we
index error, we adapted a common flux scale uncertainty of corrected the Galactic Faraday rotation using φGalactic = 5◦
10% associated with the calibration of the LOFAR, GMRT (Oppermann et al. 2012).
and VLA data, as commonly used in the literature (e.g. van
Weeren et al. 2016c; Hoang et al. 2017).
2.7 Chandra X-ray data
The Chandra ACIS-I observation (ID: #4961, PI: Kempner)
2.6 Polarization measurements of A1240 was taken on Feb. 5, 2005 and has a duration of
We used the VLA 2−4 GHz data to study the linear polariza- 52 ks. Following the data reduction procedure described in
tion properties of the faint diffuse emission from A1240. We Vikhlinin et al. (2005), we applied the calibration files4 using
made multiple polarization maps with (i) the full bandwidth the chav package5 . The calibration includes filtering out bad
2 − 4 GHz data which maximised the polarization detection pixels, correcting for the position-dependent inefficiency of
significance, (ii) successive narrower (480 MHz) band data to the charge transfer and correcting for photon energies with
examine the frequency dependence of the polarized emission gain maps. The background emission was subtracted using
and (iii) successive 224 MHz bandwidth chunks to ensure standard blank sky files. For more details on the reduction
that our measurements were not suffering from bandwidth procedure, we refer to Vikhlinin et al. (2005).
depolarisation. In each case we made Stokes I, Q and U im-
ages with WSClean (Offringa et al. 2014). The imaging was
done with the multi-scale and joined-channel deconvolution 3 RESULTS
algorithm (Offringa & Smirnov 2017). We also used Briggs In Fig. 1 we present high-resolution continuum images of
(robust = 0.00) weighting on the uv-data. The reason for A1240 that were made with LOFAR at a frequency of 143
using WSClean, instead of CASA, is because the combination MHz. The GMRT 612 MHz and VLA 3 GHz contours are
of multiscale and Stokes Q/U CLEAN, which is essential for overlaid on the Subaru r-band image in Fig. 2. The reso-
recovering the faint diffuse polarized emission of A1240, is lution is θ FWHM = 15 00 × 10 00 (P A = 87◦ ) for the LOFAR
not yet available in CASA (version 4.7). To obtain the polar- image and is θ FWHM = 21 00 × 21 00 for the VLA and GMRT
ization intensity P and angle φ maps, the Stokes Q and U images. A common Briggs’ robust weighting of −0.25 and
images were combined as follows, outertaper = 5 00 , 17 00 and 9 00 were used for the LOFAR,
GMRT and VLA imaging (see Subsec. 2.4). In Fig. 3 we
1 present a low-resolution (41 00 × 36 00 , P A = 13◦ ) 143 MHz
q
U
P= Q2 + U 2 ; φ= arctan . (2)
2 Q image of A1240 (robust = 0.10, outertaper = 25 00 ). The ra-
dio relics in the northern and southern outskirts of A1240,
From the polarized P and Stokes I emission maps, the
that were previously observed with the WENSS 325 MHz
total polarization fraction, F = P/I, was calculated for pixels
in Kempner & Sarazin (2001) and with the VLA 325 MHz
within the > 3σrms region of the Stokes I image. To obtain
the corrected flux measurements, the final Stokes P and I
images were then divided by the VLA primary beam to cor- 4 CIAO v4.6 and CALDB v4.6.5
rect for the sensitivity attenuation. 5 http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~alexey/CHAV

MNRAS 000, 1–17 (2017)

6 D. N. Hoang et al.
and 1.4 GHz in Bonafede et al. (2009), were detected with a Table 3. Integrated fluxes for the radio relics of A1240.
peak flux of 12σrms in our high resolution images (Figs. 1-3).
Bonafede et al. (2009) previously presented spectral index
Source S143 MHz (mJy) S612 MHz (mJy) S3 GHz (mJy)
and polarization properties and equipartition magnetic field
measurements of the relics. With the wide-band observations A1240-1 68.45 ± 1.38 13.32 ± 1.60 2.54 ± 0.09
between 143 MHz and 3 GHz we provide new measurements A1240-2 202.39 ± 2.40 33.77 ± 3.70 6.43 ± 0.17
on the spectra and polarization properties of the relics.

3.1.2 Polarization analysis

3.1 The double radio relics
In Fig. 6 we present polarization electric field vectors in the
The detected relics (Figs. 1 and 2) have projected sizes of regions of the relics. The polarized radio emission is extended
0.68×0.20 Mpc2 and 1.35×0.35 Mpc2 , respectively; and their along the length of the relics. The electric field vectors are
major axes are aligned with the 3σrms edges of the Chandra approximately perpendicular to the major axes of the relics.
X-ray emission (Fig. 3). For both relics, the surface bright- The integrated fractional polarization at 3 GHz is 29 ± 2%
ness gradient is steeper on the outer edges than that in the (up to F̄beam = 58% in the most polarised regions in Fig. 6)
inner edges. Across the length of A1240-1, the surface bright- for A1240-1 and is 16 ± 2% (up to F̄beam = 40%) for A1240-
ness gradually decreases from west to east. The emission on 2. Our fractional polarization measurement is close to the
the western and eastern sides of A1240-2 appears completely value of 26% for A1240-1 measured from the VLA 1.4 GHz
detached at 612 MHz and 3 GHz (Fig. 2), but is connected data (Bonafede et al. 2009), but lower than that of 29% for
at 143 MHz (Fig. 1). A1240-2.
We examined the dependence of the fractional polariza-
tion on frequency. The VLA 2 − 4 GHz data were split into
4 sub data sets, each of which has a bandwidth of 480 MHz.
For each 480 MHz data set, we made polarized emission and
3.1.1 Spectral analysis total intensity (Stokes I) images in a similar manner to the
procedure used for the full-band 2 − 4 GHz data (see Subsec.
In Fig. 4 (left) we present the three-frequency spectral index 2.6). The region that was used to measure the integrated
map between 143 MHz and 3 GHz of A1240 (see Subsec. polarized fluxes is within the > 3σrms pixels of the full-band
2.5). In Fig. 4 (left), the spectral indices for A1240-1 and Stokes I image. The fractional polarization, F = P/I, was
A1240-2 were found to steepen from the outer edge towards estimated for each 480 MHz data set and is plotted in Fig.
the inner regions. The steepening trend across the width of 6. The mean polarized emission for the first-three 480 MHz
the relics is better visible in the spectral index profiles in the data chunks for A1240-1 and A1240-2 were measured to be
right panel of Fig. 4. In particular the spectral indices are ∼ 32±4% and ∼ 17±4%, respectively. These fractional polar-
−0.94 ± 0.06 and −0.97 ± 0.05 at the outer edges of A1240-1 ization measurements are consistent with the mean values
and A1240-2, respectively. Towards the inner regions at a (i.e. 29 ± 2% for A1240-1 and 16 ± 2% for A1240-2) that we
distance of 63 00 (∼ 204 kpc) from the outer edges of A1240- measured directly from the full-band polarized emission map
1 and A1240-2, the spectral indices significantly steepen to (Fig. 6) indicating that our measurements are not severely
−1.16 ± 0.05 and −1.23 ± 0.05, respectively. affected by bandwidth depolarisation. Furthermore, mea-
To estimate the integrated spectral indices of A1240-1 surements were also made with a bandwidth of 224 MHz
and A1240-2, we used the LOFAR 143 MHz, GMRT 612 and these, whilst at lower SNR, are consistent with both
MHz and VLA 3 GHz images that were used to make the the 2 GHz and 480 MHz bandwidth measurements (Fig. 6).
spectral index map in Fig. 4. The integrated fluxes were The polarization angle of the emission over the regions of
measured within the > 3σrms region of the LOFAR image on A1240-1 and A1240-2 was measured to be approximately
all three images, are given in Table 3 and is plotted in Fig. constant over the 2 − 4 GHz bandwidth.
5. The measured fluxes at three frequencies were fit with a
power-law function, S ∝ ν α . The best-fit spectral indices for
A1240-1 and A1240-2 were estimated to be −1.08 ± 0.05 and
−1.13 ± 0.05, respectively. Our spectral index measurements
are statistically consistent with the 325 MHz − 1.4 GHz
3.2 A connection with A1237
measurements of −0.96 ± 0.26 and −1.11 ± 0.27 in Kempner
& Sarazin (2001) and −1.2 ± 0.1 and −1.3 ± 0.2 in Bonafede Fig. 3 shows the location of A1237 which is a cluster that
et al. (2009). In addition, to search for spectral curvature is falling to A1240 from the south (Barrena et al. 2009). In
we divided the data into two frequency intervals: from 143 the central region of A1237 we detect a tailed radio galaxy
to 612 MHz and from 612 MHz to 3 GHz. We estimated that shows extended emission towards the south, suggesting
the integrated spectral indices between 143 and 612 MHz to that the radio galaxy is moving to the north with respect to
be −1.13 ± 0.11 and −1.23 ± 0.10 for A1240-1 and A1240-2, the local ICM. No diffuse large-scale emission was observed
and between 612 MHz and 3 GHz to be −1.03 ± 0.10 and from the ICM of A1237 or the region between the clusters.
−1.08 ± 0.05 for A1240-1 and A1240-2, providing no clear Using the 41 00 × 36 00 -resolution image (Fig. 3) we estimated
evidence for spectral curvature between 143 MHz and 3 GHz the integrated flux over an area of radius of 3 0 − 5 0 (Fig. 3) is
in either relic. not higher than 25−69 mJy at 143 MHz at 1σrms significance.

MNRAS 000, 1–17 (2017)

 Radio observations of Abell 1240 7

12'

09'
Declination

06'

03'

+43°00'

15s 24m00s 45s 30s 11h23m15s

Right Ascension
Figure 1. LOFAR 143 MHz total intensity map of A1240 with contours in grey (positive) and blue (negative) (θFWHM = 1500 × 1000 , P A =
87◦ ). The contours are [−3, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48]×σrms , where σrms = 165 µJy/beam. The green contours are the Chandra X-ray surface brightness
smoothed with a 2D Gaussian kernel to 4000 resolution. The X-ray contour levels are [3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18]×σ, where σ = 0.5×10−6 cts/s/arcmin2 .

Table 4. Spectral properties and Mach numbers for the radio relics.

Source αint αinj αint

a Mint Minj Mint a

A1240-1 −1.08 ± 0.05 −0.94 ± 0.06 −1.2 ± 0.1 5.1+3.1

−1.1
2.4 ± 0.1 3.3 ± 0.2
A1240-2 −1.13 ± 0.05 −0.97 ± 0.05 −1.3 ± 0.2 4.0+1.1
−0.6
2.3 ± 0.1 2.8 ± 0.3

Notes: Col. 1: source name; Col. 2: integrated spectral index between 143 MHz and 3 GHz (Subsec. 3.1.1); Col. 3: injection spectral
index calculated in the outer edge regions (Subsec. 3.1.1); Col. 4: integrated spectral index between 325 MHz and 1.4 GHz (Bonafede
et al. 2009); Col. 5 − 7: Mach numbers derived from Col. 2 − 4, respectively; a : data from Bonafede et al. (2009).

4 DISCUSSION 4.1.1 Injection spectral index and shock Mach number

The predictions of particle (re-)acceleration models at shock
fronts depends on the Mach number of shocks (e.g. Donnert
et al. 2016; Kang & Ryu 2016) that is defined as follows,

vshock
M= , (3)
cs
4.1 Radio relics where vshock is the shock speed and cs is the sound speed in
the upstream ICM. For simple planar shocks in the linear
Bonafede et al. (2009) discussed possible formation models test particle regime of DSA, the spectral index of the rel-
for the radio relics in A1240. The models were associated ativistic electrons that are injected at the shock front is a
with large-scale outward propagating shocks generated dur- function of the Mach number (Blandford & Eichler 1987),
ing the cluster merger and included (i) shock acceleration
via Fermi-I process (Enßlin et al. 1998; Roettiger et al. 1999; s
Hoeft & Bruggen 2007) and (ii) shock re-acceleration of fos- 1 M2 + 1 2αinj − 3
αinj = − 2 or M= . (4)
sil plasma via adiabatic compression (Enßlin et al. 2001). 2 M −1 2αinj + 1
Using our high-resolution, large-frequency range, and deep
LOFAR, GMRT and VLA data, we discuss below the impli- where the injection spectral index αinj = (1 − δinj )/2, here δinj
cations of our observational results (Sec. 3) in the framework is the power of the particle power spectrum, dN/dE ∝ E −δinj .
of the relic formation models. The injection spectral index for a simple planar shock

MNRAS 000, 1–17 (2017)

8 D. N. Hoang et al.

A discussed in the literature (e.g. Stroe et al. 2014; de Gasperin

A1240-1 et al. 2015; Hoang et al. 2017).
2’ B In case of A1240, we estimated the integrated spectral
indices between 143 MHz and 3 GHz to be −1.08 ± 0.05 and
C
D −1.13 ± 0.05 for A1240-1 and A1240-2, respectively (Sub-
sec. 3.1.1). Using Eqs. 4 and 5, we estimated the injection
spectral indices and the corresponding Mach numbers for
the relics to be −0.58 ± 0.05 and 5.1+3.1−1.1
for A1240-1 and
−0.63 ± 0.05 and 4.0+1.1
−0.6
for A1240-2. These Mach numbers
are significantly higher than those (i.e. 3.3 ± 0.2 and 2.8 ± 0.3,
respectively) that were estimated with the VLA 325 MHz
and 1.4 GHz data using the above approach reported in
Bonafede et al. (2009). Using the second approach of mea-
E suring the injection spectral index directly at the shock front
F
(Subsec. 3.1.1), we obtained injection spectral indices of
−0.94 ± 0.06 and −0.97 ± 0.05 for the A1240-1 and A1240-2
A1240-2
shocks, respectively. The corresponding Mach numbers are
2.4 ± 0.1 and 2.3 ± 0.1. The Mach numbers we have estimated
are significantly different from each other. A possible rea-
son for this discrepancy, as pointed out in Kang (2015a), is
that the shock compression ratio and the flux of the injected
relativistic electrons reduce as the shock speed decreases in
Figure 2. A Subaru r,g band image of A1240. The VLA (green) time. These lead to a significant deviation of the integrated
and GMRT (magenta) contours are levelled at [−3, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48]× spectra of the relics from the power laws of the simple pla-
σrms (dashed negative), where σrms = 175 µJy/beam and nar shock model which predicts the αinj − αint relation (Eq.
17 µJy/beam for the GMRT and VLA images, respectively. The 5). Therefore, the integrated spectra of the relics may be an
resolution of the radio images is θFWHM = 2100 × 2100 . The radio
inaccurate proxy for Mach numbers. However, the spectra
sources are labelled.
of the relics at the location of the shock fronts are properly
described by the DSA predictions (Kang 2015a) and should
be used for the estimates of Mach numbers.
model has been commonly estimated in the literature by
We analysed Chandra X-ray data to search for shocks at
using an approximation,
the relic locations. We fit the surface brightness (SB) with
a function consisting of a β-model and a power law using
1 PROFFIT (see, e.g., Eckert et al. 2011; Andrade-Santos et al.
αinj = αint + , (5)
2 2016). The X-ray SB profiles in Fig. 7 indicates possible dis-
where αint is the integrated spectral index of the relic.The continuities across A1240-1 and A1240-2 which would imply
advantage of this approach is that the measurement bias is the presence of shocks or cold fronts at the location of the
free from the projection and synthesized beam effects as the relics. To distinguish the nature of the possible discontinu-
integrated fluxes are measured over the whole region of the ities, a more detailed temperature map is required, which is
relic. However, in many clusters the Mach numbers derived not possible to make with the current shallow X-ray data. In
from the integrated spectral index are higher than those es- Fig. 7, the SB profile has a break close to the central location
timated from X-ray data (e.g. Stroe et al. 2013; Akamatsu of A1240-1 and a SB discontinuity towards the southern di-
et al. 2015; Eckert et al. 2016). Furthermore, hydrodynami- rection is found at the inner region of A1240-2. If the relics
cal simulations of cluster shocks indicate that the αinj − αint trace the candidate merger shocks, the locations of these
approximation (Eq. 5) does not hold for spherical expanding breaks seem to be inconsistent with the DSA model that re-
shocks as the shock speed decreases in time (Kang 2015a,b). quires shock fronts to be located at the flattest spectral re-
A second method to estimate the injection spectral index is gions (i.e. the outer regions) of the relics which is where the
to directly measure at the shock front with sufficiently high- relativistic electrons are (re-)accelerated (e.g. Enßlin et al.
resolution spectral index maps (e.g. de Gasperin et al. 2015; 1998; van Weeren et al. 2010). However, it is known that
van Weeren et al. 2016c; Hoang et al. 2017). It is noted that positional shifts between the relic and X-ray shock positions
this direct measurement of the injection spectral index is can occur due to the contamination of small-scale substruc-
only applicable to the shocks that are moving on/close the ture behind the shock that is unresolved, by low-resolution
plane of the sky to minimize the mixing of different aged X-ray observations (Ogrean et al. 2013; van Weeren et al.
electrons. A third method to estimate the injection spectral 2016c), or due to the contamination of foreground X-ray
index is to model the spectral ageing of the relics (Harwood emission in hydrodynamical simulations or due to projec-
et al. 2013, 2015; Stroe et al. 2014; de Gasperin et al. 2015). tion effects (Hong et al. 2015). Finally, it is noted that the
The spectral ageing modelling requires observations at least X-ray data is very shallow (i.e. exposure duration of 52 ks)
4 frequencies to constrain the spectral curvature of the relics, and the apparent location of the shock fronts in Fig. 7 might
which we are unable to do with our current data sets. The be biased by the low S/N of the X-ray data.
estimation of injection spectral indices for radio relics using In an attempt to obtain approximate estimates of the
the three approaches above have pros and cons which were shock Mach numbers with the current X-ray data, we find

MNRAS 000, 1–17 (2017)

 Radio observations of Abell 1240 9

10'

05' Abell 1240

Declination

+43°00'

Abell 1237
55'

+42°50'
24m 11h23m
Right Ascension
Figure 3. LOFAR 143 MHz total intensity map of A1240 with contours in grey (positive) and blue (negative) (θFWHM = 4100 × 3600 ,
P A = 13◦ ). The contours are [−3, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48] × σrms , where σrms = 410 µJy/beam. The X-ray contours are identical to those in Fig. 1
and are only available for A1240. The dashed magenta ellipse shows the region where the upper limit of diffuse emission is estimated in
Subsec. 4.2. The green dashed circle marks the region of A1237.

12' 0.64 12' 0.14 -0.8 A1240-1 A1240-1

A1240-2
0.72 0.13 -0.9
09' 0.80 09' 0.12 -1.0
0.88 0.11
Declination
Declination

-1.1
MHz

06' 06' 0.10

3 GHz

0.96
α143

0.09 -1.2
1.04
03' 03' 0.08 -1.3
1.12 A1240-2
0.07 -1.4
+43°00'
1.20 +43°00' 0.06 -1.5
1.28
15s 24m00s 45s 30s 11h23m15s 15s 24m00s 45s 30s 11h23m15s 0.05 0 50 100 150 200 250 300
Right Ascension Right Ascension d [kpc]

Figure 4. Left: Three-frequency spectral index map between 143 MHz and 3 GHz of A1240 at 2100 (or ∼ 68 kpc) resolution. Middle:
The corresponding spectral index error map. Right: The spectral index profiles across the width of the relics A1240-1 and A1240-2 and
towards the cluster centre. The flattest spectral indices are −0.94 ± 0.06 and −0.97 ± 0.05 at the outer edges of A1240-1 and A1240-2,
respectively. The subplots show the regions where the spectral indices were extracted. The compact sources (i.e. green dotted circles)
were masked. The radial size of the region is equal to the synthesized beam size of 2100 . The downward pointing arrows indicate the upper
limit of the spectral indices that have < 2σrms detection confidence levels in VLA and/or GMRT observations. The LOFAR 143 MHz
superimposed contours in both panels are at identical spacings to those in Fig. 1 (here σrms = 280 µJy/beam).

that the best-fit density jumps would imply Mach numbers 4.1.2 Acceleration efficiency and sources of relativistic
of ∼ 2 for both relics, assuming that the density jumps trace electrons
two shock fronts. These Mach numbers are in line with our
estimates using the radio data (i.e. Minj in Table 4). How-
A number of radio relics have been observed at the locations
ever, future X-ray studies with deeper X-ray/SZ observa-
of merger shocks detected with X-ray observations (e.g. via
tions will be necessary to provide accurate constraints on the
surface brightness discontinuity and/or temperature jump).
Mach numbers and the exact locations of the shock fronts.
The shocks are generally thought to accelerate the ICM elec-
trons to relativistic energies and are visible in the radio band
under the presence of the large-scale, µG cluster magnetic
field. The Mach numbers for the merger shocks are typically

MNRAS 000, 1–17 (2017)

10 D. N. Hoang et al.

A1240-1 (® = ¡ 1: 08 § 0: 05) The k-corrected radio power used for the relics in the
143 MHz
calculation is PA1240-1 = (7.52 ± 0.17) × 1024 W Hz−1 and
A1240-2 (® = ¡ 1: 13 § 0: 05) 143 MHz
PA1240-2 = (2.24 ± 0.33) × 1025 W Hz−1 that we calculated
100
from the LOFAR image (see Table 3). Given the equipar-
tition magnetic field strength of ∼ 2.5 µG in the relic re-
gions (Bonafede et al. 2009), in the cases of higher Mach
Flux [mJy]

numbers (i.e. 4.0 for A1240-1 and 5.1 for A1240-2) the par-
ticle acceleration efficiencies that are required to produce
the synchrotron emission in A1240-1 and A1240-2 are less
10
than 1% and 0.5%, respectively. Although the precise effi-
ciency of electron acceleration by the low Mach numbers
of shocks associated with the relics is still an open ques-
tion, these low efficiencies are likely to be realistic (Brunetti
& Jones 2014). However, the required efficiencies for low
100 1000 Mach numbers (e.g. . 3) are close to 100 percent which
Freq. [MHz] is challenging for DSA. To avoid the high efficiency prob-
lem, it is proposed that the low Mach number shocks re-
Figure 5. Integrated spectra for the radio relics of A1240. The
integrated fluxes of the relics were measured in the LOFAR 143
accelerate a pre-existing population of relativistic electrons,
MHz, GMRT 612 MHz and VLA 3 GHz 2100 -resolution images instead of accelerating the thermal electrons (e.g. Marke-
(Table 2) and are given in Table 3. The spectral index values vitch et al. 2005; Kang & Ryu 2011; Kang et al. 2012). The
that were obtained from the spectral power-law fitting, S ∝ ν α , pre-existing fossil plasma could originate from radio galaxies
for the relics are given in Table 4. that are close to the relics. To search for sources of possi-
ble fossil plasma, we obtained the redshifts from the Subaru
and SDSS optical data (Golovich et al. 2017) for the ra-
measured to be . 3 from X-ray observations (e.g. Marke- dio galaxies (i.e. A, B, C, E, F in Fig. 2) that have small
vitch 2010; Akamatsu & Kawahara 2013). For these weak angular separations to A1240-1 and A1240-2. The galaxies
shocks, the efficiency to accelerate electrons to relativistic C (z = 0.888 ± 0.0979) and E (z = 0.448 ± 0.0289) are back-
energies directly from the thermal pool can be challenging in ground sources and D has no redshift information. The radio
the framework of DSA theory (e.g. Kang et al. 2012; Pinzke galaxies A (z = 0.19299 ± 0.00003), B (z = 0.19223 ± 0.00005),
et al. 2013; Brunetti & Jones 2014; Botteon et al. 2016b; and possibly F (z = 0.152 ± 0.0263) are close to the clus-
Eckert et al. 2016; van Weeren et al. 2016c). Here the parti- ter mean redshift (z = 0.1948) and are possibly sources of
cle acceleration efficiency is defined as follows (Botteon et al. mildly relativistic electrons that could be associated with
2016b), the synchrotron radio emission in the relics. An example of
this scenario was observed in Abell 3411-3412 where fossil
Erelic electrons from a radio galaxy have been suggested to be re-
η= , (6)
∆FKE accelerated by a merger shock which disturbs the morphol-
where Erelic is the energy flux of the accelerated relativis- ogy of the tails at the location of the shock and re-flattens
tic electrons at relic and ∆FKE is the kinematic energy flux the spectral index of the tails at the location of the shock
available at the shock, (van Weeren et al. 2017). Other less obvious examples are
found in PLCKG287.0+32.9 (Bonafede et al. 2014) and the
Bullet cluster 1E 0657-55.8 (Shimwell et al. 2015). As our
Erelic = e,down vdown (7) radio data presented in Figs. 1 and 2 are not deep enough to
provide information on whether A, B and F are connected to
1 A1240-1 and A1240-2 and do not allow us to study the spec-
3
∆FKE = 0.5ρup vshock (1 − ), (8) tral index trend of the sources, future deeper, high-resolution
C2
radio observations will be necessary to establish such a con-
where e,down and vdown are the downstream particle energy nection.
density and velocity, respectively; ρup is the upstream den-
(γ+1)M 2
sity; vshock is the shock speed; C = (γ−1)M 2 +2 is the compres-
4.1.3 Size and power of the double relics
sion factor of a shock Mach number M (here γ = 5/3). The
relativistic electrons in the downstream region were assumed In the DSA model, the extent of radio relics is the same
to have a single-power law spectrum, Ninj ∝ p−δinj . For de- as the size of the shock fronts which (re-)accelerate in situ
tails of the formulas, we refer to Botteon et al. (2016b). the relativistic electrons in the relics (e.g. Jaffe 1977; Bland-
In Fig. 8 we examine the particle acceleration effi- ford & Eichler 1987; Enßlin et al. 1998). In merging clusters
ciency for shocks with the injection indices (or Mach num- that host double radio relics on opposite sides of the cluster
bers) for the relics A1240-1 and A1240-2 (see Table 4). centre, the relative largest linear size (LLS) of the relics de-
In the calculation, we used the downstream particle num- pends on the mass ratio of the sub-clusters, as demonstrated
ber densities ρA1240-1 = (1 − 2) × 10−4 cm−3 and ρA1240-2 = in, e.g., hydrodynamical simulations of ideal binary cluster
(2.5 − 3.5) × 10−4 cm−3 , which were derived by fitting of the merger by van Weeren et al. (2011a). In these simulations,
electron density beta-model profile to the Chandra X-ray the sub-cluster mass ratio is varied to match the observed
data. We also used the downstream temperature TA1240-1 = LLSs of double relics (i.e. in the Sausage cluster). The larger
5.1+1.0
−0.8
keV and TA1240-2 = 5.4+0.9
−0.8
keV (Barrena et al. 2009). relic is found to be behind the more massive sub-cluster.

MNRAS 000, 1–17 (2017)

 Radio observations of Abell 1240 11
30
A1240-1 A1240-1 (224 MHz) A1240-2 (224 MHz)
12:00 A1240-1 (480 MHz) A1240-2 (480 MHz)
30 60
Declination

11:00
30 50
10:00 100%
30
+43:09:00 40
40 30 20 11:23:10

F [%]
Right Ascension
A1240-2 30
02:00
20
Declination

01:00

+43:00:00 100%
10
+42:59:00 02.0
24:00 50 40 11:23:30 2.5 3.0 3.5
Right Ascension Freq. [GHz]
Figure 6. Left: Electric field vector maps in the regions of the A1240 relics. The red vertical reference lines for 100% of fractional
polarization are shown in the left bottom corners. The VLA 2 − 4 GHz 18.500 × 14.500 resolution (grey) contours are at identical levels
to those in Fig. 1 (here σrms = 13 µJy/beam). Right: Fractional polarization of A1240-1 and A1240-2 between 2 and 4 GHz. The down
pointing arrows indicate the data points where polarized emission is below 1.4 σrms detection limit. The fractional polarization for the
VLA 224 MHz and 480 MHz bandwidth data sets are in line with each other.

north south
SB [counts s-1 arcmin-2]

SB [counts s-1 arcmin-2]

10-3

10-3

10-4
radio relic radio relic
2 3
1.5 2
1 1
0.5
χ

0 0
-0.5 -1
-1 -2
-1.5
-2 -3
3 4 5 6 3 4 5 6
Distance [arcmin] Distance [arcmin]

Figure 7. 52 ks Chandra 0.5 − 2.0 keV surface brightness profiles across A1240-1 (left) and A1240-2 (right). The blue lines are the fit of
the data to a function consisting of a β-model and a power law.

Although the mass configuration (i.e. ratio of 1 − 3 : 1) in lations in van Weeren et al. (2011a), a number of merging
the simulations might be inconsistent with the reconstructed clusters are observed to host more massive sub-clusters be-
mass distribution in the weak lensing data (i.e. mass ratio hind the main relics (e.g. ZwCl 0008.8+5215 in van Weeren
∼ 1 in Jee et al. 2015 or ∼ 1 : 2 in Okabe et al. 2015), this et al. 2011b, Golovich et al. 2017; RX J0603.3+4214 in van
might be because the observed LLS of the faint, steep spec- Weeren et al. 2016c, Jee et al. 2016; and PLCK G287.0+32.9
trum relic were biased low by the sensitivity limitations of in Bonafede et al. 2014, Finner et al. 2017).
the high-frequency radio observations used in van Weeren In A1240, the projected LLS of A1240-2 in the south
et al. (2011a). We note that the error bars associated with is a factor of 2 larger than that of A1240-1 in the north
the weak lensing analyses are so large that it is not clear (i.e. 1.35 and 0.68 Mpc, respectively; see Subsec. 3.1). This
there is real discrepancy. In support of this, it is known that implies that the southern shock front is larger in projection
the LLS of the small relic is much large and almost equal to than the north one. Unfortunately, we are unable to check
the main relic (Hoang et al. 2017). It is also noted that the this with the current shallow X-ray data. However, if this
observed LLS of a relic also depends on mass concentration turns out to be the case and the mass concentration of the
of the sub-clusters prior to merger. In line with the simu- sub-clusters is similar, the sizes of the shock fronts is likely

MNRAS 000, 1–17 (2017)

12 D. N. Hoang et al.
100 roughly perpendicular to the major axes of the relics which
implies an alignment of magnetic fields along the major axes
of the relics. At the shock fronts, the magnetic field align-
ments are likely to be caused by shock compression. Since
the polarized emission is a vector quantity, the fractional po-
10 larization as measured by an observer depends on the view-
ing angle θ and the compression factor C = (αint −1)/(αint + 21 )
(assuming a polytropic index of the ICM gas of γgas = 5/3,
η [%]

Enßlin et al. 1998). The viewing angle here is the projection

angle between the normal of the shock front and the line
1
from the observers to the shock; for example, θ = 0◦ or 90◦
A1240-1 (Mach 2.4)
means that the shock is occurring along the LOS or in the
A1240-1 (Mach 5.1) plane of the sky, respectively. In cases of a weak magnetic
A1240-2 (Mach 2.3) field or small ratio of the magnetic pressure to internal gas
A1240-2 (Mach 4.0) B 2 , where B is magnetic field,
pressure (i.e. PB /Pthermal = 8πρRT
0
1 10 ρ is thermal electron density, R is ideal gas constant, T is
B [µG] thermal gas temperature), the observed mean fractional po-
Figure 8. Particle acceleration efficiency η(B) required to pro- larization of a shock is estimated as following (Enßlin et al.
duce the radio surface brightness in the relics of A1240. The ver- 1998),
tical lines indicate the equipartition magnetic field 2.4 µG and
2.5 µG in A1240-1 and A1240-2, respectively (Bonafede et al.
δint + 1 sin2 (θ)
2009). Calculations assume a minimum momentum of electrons F̄ 6 , (9)
pmin = 0.1me c. δint + 7 2C 2
3 C 2 −1 − sin2 (θ)

where δint = 1−2αint is the slope of the electron density spec-

different because the masses of the sub-clusters prior to the trum. The 6 sign indicates that the observed polarized emis-
merger are not equal. The sub-cluster that is more massive sion might further experience depolarization effects due to,
(or larger in size) should generate a larger shock surface in e.g., the spatial resolution of the observations or wide band-
front of its direction of propagation during a major cluster width imaging. In case of A1240, we estimated the magnetic
merger. This scenario might be applied for A1240 as the field to thermal pressure ratios of ∼ 18% for A1240-1 and
cluster is known to be observed 0.3 Gyr after core crossed ∼ 9% for A1240-2, which implies that the relics are located in
(Barrena et al. 2009). The southern sub-cluster, which comes a region that satisfies the weak magnetic field criteria. Here
from the north before the merger, is more massive (about we used the magnetic field strength (i.e. BA1240-1 = 2.4 µG,
2.8 times; Barrena et al. 2009) than the northern sub-cluster BA1240-2 = 2.5 µG) estimated in Bonafede et al. (2009), the
and generates a wider shock in the south than the northern particle upstream densities (i.e. ρA1240-1 = 1.5 × 10−4 cm−3 ,
counter shock. ρA1240-2 = 3.0 × 10−4 cm−3 ) calculated in Sec. 4.1.2 and the
The radio power at 143 MHz for A1240-2 is a factor thermal temperature (i.e. TA1240-1 = 5.1 keV and TA1240-2 =
of ∼ 3 more powerful than that for A1240-1 (see Subsec. 5.4 keV) measured in Barrena et al. (2009).
4.1.2). This is surprising because the radio derived Mach To examine the possible viewing angles of the relics
number for A1240-2 is smaller or equal to that for A1240- A1240-1 and A1240-2, we plot the fractional polarization
1 (Table 4). This might be because the surface area in the F̄ of the relics as a function of viewing angle θ in Fig. 9.
southern shock is larger than that in the northern shock Here we used the integrated spectral indices of −1.08 ± 0.05
which might be due to the difference in the mass of the and −1.13±0.05 for A1240-1 and A1240-2, respectively (Sub-
sub-clusters, as we discussed above. The true reason is still sec. 3.1.1). Since the polarization measured from the VLA
unclear as the synchrotron power of the relics under DSA 2 − 4 GHz data might be slightly depolarized due to the
model is a function of many parameters (e.g. shock surface wide-bandwidth, we used the mean fractional polarization
area, electron density, magnetic field strengths, ICM tem- that was measured from the VLA images (bandwidth of 480
perature, particle acceleration efficiency at the shocks; Eq. MHz, see Subsec. 3.1.2). The mean fractional polarization
32 in Hoeft & Bruggen 2007) that are poorly constrained measured from the VLA data sets are 32±4% and 17±4% for
with the current data. Other possibilities for the difference A1240-1 and A1240-2, respectively. These correspond to the
in the power of the relics are that the relativistic electrons viewing angles of θ A1240-1 > 53±3◦ and θ A1240-2 > 39±5◦ (i.e.
in the relics are re-accelerated from fossil plasma and the via Eq. 9). The estimated viewing angles are in agreement
radio power depends on the fossil plasma populations (e.g. with the constraints from the two-body modelling using op-
van Weeren et al. 2016c) or the Mach numbers derived from tical redshift data that the cluster merger likely occurred in
radio spectrum are not an approximate proxy for the X-ray the plane of the sky (Barrena et al. 2009).
shock Mach numbers (e.g. Akamatsu et al. 2015, 2017; van
Weeren et al. 2016c).
4.2 Radio halo and cluster mass
Cassano et al. (2013) reports the relation between the power
4.1.4 Viewing angle of the merger axis
of radio haloes and the cluster mass (i.e. the P1.4 GHz − M500
The radio emission from the relics A1240-1 and A1240-2 relation). The power of radio haloes increases as a function
(Fig. 6) is highly polarized. The electric field vectors are of cluster mass, implying that more gravitational energy is

MNRAS 000, 1–17 (2017)

 Radio observations of Abell 1240 13
70
A1240-1 Table 5. Upper limits for the radio halo power of A1240.

60 A1240-2 Region P1.4 GHz [1023 W Hz−1 ]

50 Circle (RH = 264kpc) 0.30 ± 0.14

Circle (mock injection) 0.29 ± 0.13
40 Ellipse (from Figs. 3)
Ellipse (mock injection)
2.2 ± 1.0
1.4 ± 0.6
F [ %]

30
the halo flux at 143 MHz is at most S143 MHz = A × σrms =
20 5.1 mJy, where σrms = 410 µJy beam−1 = 0.244 µJy arcsec−2
A1240-1 and A = πRH 2 = 21 × 103 arcsec2 , corresponding to a radius of
10 264 kpc. The derived upper limit for the halo power at 1.4
A1240-2 GHz is P1.4 GHz = (3.0 ± 1.4) × 1022 W Hz−1 . Our estimated
00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
1σrms upper limit for the radio halo is ∼ 6 − 12 times smaller
than the value predicted from the P1.4 GHz −M500 relation (i.e.
θ [◦ ] P1.4 GHz = (1.9±0.9)×1023 W Hz−1 ; Cassano et al. 2013). The
Figure 9. Fractional polarization of the relics A1240-1 and radio halo in A1240 is therefore underluminous in compar-
A1240-2 as a function of viewing angle. The mean fractional po- ison with the prediction of the P1.4 GHz − M500 relation if it
larization of A1240-1 and A1240-2 was measured to be 32 ± 4% has a small radius (i.e. RH ). Several other double-relic clus-
and 17 ± 4% from the 480 MHz-bandwidth data chunks (Subsec. ters are observed to host small haloes (e.g. Brown et al. 2011;
3.1.2), which correspond to viewing angles of θA1240-1 > 53 ± 3◦ Bonafede et al. 2012; de Gasperin et al. 2015). But it is noted
(red arrow) and θA1240-2 > 39 ± 5◦ (blue arrow), respectively. that the apparent sizes of faint radio haloes might be biased
due to, e.g., the depth or uv-coverage of the observations.
channelled into the radio emission in more massive merging In the post-shock turbulence acceleration scenario, the
clusters. A number of low-mass (∼ 1014 M ) merging clus- turbulence is produced by the baroclinic effects at the
ters have also been detected to host radio haloes. However, shocks, where the pressure gradients are not in parallel
diffuse emission has not been observed in the central regions with the downstream total plasma (Brunetti & Jones 2014).
of some clusters in a similar mass range (e.g. Abell 2345 Suggested by the Fermi-II process, the radio halo emission
in Bonafede et al. 2009, ZwCl 2341.1+0000 in van Weeren may start from the inner edges of the relics, or behind the
et al. 2009, ZwCl 0008.8+5215 in van Weeren et al. 2011b, shocks, and approximately trace the X-ray emission (e.g. van
PSZ1 G096.89+24.17 in de Gasperin et al. 2014). The ques- Weeren et al. 2016c; Hoang et al. 2017). If the radio halo of
tion remains as to what fraction of merging galaxy clusters A1240 follows a similar trend, the size of the halo should
are not able to generate radio haloes or whether the non- be approximately equal to the distance between A1240-1
detection is simply due to the sensitivity limitation of the and A1240-2 (i.e. ∼ 1.8 Mpc in projection). If we assume
current radio observations. In case of A1240, our LOFAR the halo emission encompasses the region shown by the el-
143 MHz data (Fig. 3) shows no evidence of diffuse emission lipse in Fig. 3 then the 1σrms upper limit of the radio flux
in the central region of the cluster despite of the fact that is significantly higher at S143 MHz = A × σrms = 37.2 mJy,
its ICM is highly disturbed. In this subsection, we use the where A = 152.6 × 103 arcsec2 . The ellipse has semi-minor
LOFAR data to constrain the upper limit for the flux of the and semi-major axes of 3 and 4.5 arcmin, respectively. The
radio halo. We assume that the spectral index for the halo position angle of the ellipse is 160◦ (the north-south axis be-
is αint = 1.3 ± 0.2 (i.e. the typical spectral index for a number ing the reference, the counter-clockwise being positive direc-
of known haloes; Feretti et al. 2012) and the radio power is tion). The corresponding limit on the 1.4 GHz radio power
k-corrected for the redshift of the cluster. is P1.4 GHz = (2.2 ± 1.0) × 1023 W Hz−1 , which is not dis-
crepant from that predicted by the P1.4 GHz − M500 relation
(i.e. P1.4 GHz = (1.9 ± 0.9) × 1023 W Hz−1 ; see Fig. 10). Hence,
4.2.1 Upper limit for halo flux from the LOFAR data even though we do not detect the halo, its expected power
should be close to the detection limit of our observations.
Given the cluster mass of M500 = (3.7±0.4)×1014 M (Planck
Collaboration et al. 2016), we found the predicted power for
A1240 to be P1.4 GHz = (1.9 ± 0.9) × 1023 W Hz−1 . The power 4.2.2 Upper limit of halo flux from simulations
of radio haloes is√also found to be directly proportional to
their radii, RH = Rmin × Rmax , where Rmin and Rmax are the Beside the uncertainty in the predictions of the halo size
minimum and maximum radii of the haloes (e.g. Cassano and its radio power, other possibilities for the non-detection
et al. 2007). Using the P1.4 GHz − RH relation in Cassano et al. of diffuse emission in the cluster centre are due to (i) the
(2007), we estimate that the radius for the halo in A1240 is limited uv-coverage of the interferometric observations (see,
RH = 264 kpc, which is significantly smaller than half of the e.g., Venturi et al. 2008) and (ii) the algorithms used in the
distance between A1240-1 and A1240-2 (i.e. 900 kpc). data reduction procedure.
The 1σrms upper limit for the flux of non-detected dif- To examine (i), we generated a mock image for the radio
fuse emission is commonly estimated as S = A×σrms , where A halo with a surface brightness that follows an exponential
2 y2
is the area emitting the expected diffuse emission. Given the function I(r) = I0 exp(−/re ), where  = ax 2 + b2 ≤ 1 de-
sensitivity of the LOFAR data (Fig. 3), we estimated that fines the projected shape of the diffuse emission (Bonafede

MNRAS 000, 1–17 (2017)

 14 D. N. Hoang et al.

1026
12'
model (a) 12'
data (b)

09' 09'

Declination

Declination
06' 06'
1025
P1.4GHz [W/Hz]

03' 03'

+43°00' +43°00'
23m00s 48s 36s 24s11h22m12s 23m00s 48s 36s 24s11h22m12s
1024 Right Ascension Right Ascension

1023
A1240

1015
M500 [M ]

Figure 10. The P1.4 GHz − M500 relation of radio haloes (i.e.
P1.4 GHz [1024 W Hz−1 ] = 10−2.82±0.51 × M500 3.70±0.56 [1014 M ]; i.e.

BCES bisector fitting for all detected haloes in Cassano et al.

2013). The upper limits of the radio halo for A1240, P1.4 GHz =
(1.4 ± 0.6) × 1023 W Hz−1 (red arrow), that we estimated from the
LOFAR 143 MHz data in Subsec. 4.2. The green down arrows in-
dicate upper limits for the undetected radio haloes (see Cassano
et al. 2013 for the cluster list). The grey region indicate the 95%
confidence region of the best-fit.

et al. 2017); I0 and re are free parameters (Murgia et al.

2009). The mock halo has a peak brightness of I0 = 3σrms =
0.732 µJy arcsec−2 , an effective radius of re = 102 kpc and Figure 11. Injection of halo models to the LOFAR data. (a) An
an integrated flux of 100.4 mJy at 143 MHz over the ellip- example of the injected model for the halo (smoothed to 4100 × 3600
resolution). (b) LOFAR image of the region where the halo model
tical region (a = 582 kpc and b = 873 kpc) in Figs. 3 and
is injected. (c-e) LOFAR images after the halo models of various
11. The halo model was injected (i.e. Fourier transformed) peak brightness I0 are injected. The contours start at ±2 and
into a blank column of the LOFAR data set that does not are spaced with a factor of 2. The size of the elliptical region is
include sources nor background noise. The injected uv-data identical to that in Fig. 3.
were then deconvolved with the MS − MFS options in CASA (see
Subsec. 2.4) to obtain the mock halo. The integrated flux for
the mock halo that was measured in the deconvolved image
is 95.9 mJy which is ∼ 95% of the integrated flux of the in- image. It is noted here that the halo emission is assumed
jected mock halo. This implies that the LOFAR observations to be distributed over an elliptical region between A1240-1
are sensitive to the 143 MHz, ∼ µJy arcsec−2 diffuse emission and A1240-2. In case that the P1.4 GHz − RH relation holds
of scales equivalent to the separation of the relics in A1240. for A1240, the halo would be smaller (i.e. a = b = RH =
To search for the upper limit of the halo flux, we follow 264 kpc) and the upper limit for the halo power derived from
the procedure described in Bonafede et al. (2017). We vary simulations is P1.4 GHz = (2.9 ± 1.3) × 1022 W Hz−1 . This is ∼ 6
the integrated fluxes (i.e. using I0 ) and inject the elliptical times lower than the value derived from the VLA 1.4 GHz
model (a = 582 kpc, b = 873 kpc and re = 102 kpc) to the data in Bonafede et al. (2017) and is ∼ 7 times below the
LOFAR data column. I0 is varied in steps of 0.5σrms , followed value predicted by the P1.4 GHz −M500 relation. The amount of
by fine steps of 0.1σrms between 1 − 2σrms . We found that flux that is recovered from the deconvolved images depends
no extended emission (i.e. size of > RH ) is detected in the on the brightness of the injected halo model and the regions
deconvolved images (Fig. 11) at 2σrms when the integrated where the integrated flux is measured, as shown in Fig. 12
flux of the injected model is 6 36.8 mJy (i.e. I0 = 1.1σrms ). for the case of the elliptical model for the halo.
The corresponding radio power at 1.4 GHz is P1.4 GHz = (1.4± The second possibility (ii) for the absence of the radio
0.6) × 1023 W Hz−1 . This injected power can be considered halo is beyond the scope of this paper as it requires mock
as the approximate upper limit of the halo power and is haloes to be corrupted with realistic direction-independent
consistent with our 1σrms estimate (i.e. P1.4 GHz = (2.2±1.0)× and direction-dependent effects and injected into the uv-data
1023 W Hz−1 at 143 MHz) using the LOFAR low-resolution prior to processing.

MNRAS 000, 1–17 (2017)

 Radio observations of Abell 1240 15
Injected flux [mJy]
16.7 33.5 50.2 66.9 83.7 100.4 117.1 133.9 mated to be ∼ 18% and ∼ 9% in the regions of A1240-1 and
A1240-2, respectively.
• The spectral gradients and polarimetric properties for
100 the relics are consistent with the scenario that the relics
were generated from shocks that are moving outwards. If the
80 Mach numbers are 4.0 for A1240-1 and 5.1 for A1240-2, the
Recovered flux [%]

required efficiency to accelerate electrons is less than 1% and

0.5%, respectively, suggesting that the relativistic electrons
60 in the relics might be accelerated directly from the thermal
pool. If the relics have low Mach numbers (e.g. below 3),
40 fossil electrons from radio galaxies in A1240 existing prior
to the shock passage will be required.
• With the sensitivity of our current LOFAR 143 MHz
20 ellipse data, no hints of diffuse emission in the central regions of
2σ region A1240 and A1237 were detected. Furthermore, no emission
0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0
was observed in the region between the clusters. In the case
I0 /σrms that the A1240 halo spans the entire region (i.e. the ellipse
in Fig. 3) between the relics, our upper limit for the radio
halo power of A1240 by injecting of halo models is P1.4 GHz =
Figure 12. Recovered flux for the radio halo depends on the S/N (1.4±0.6)×1023 W Hz−1 which is consistent with the expected
of the injected elliptical model. The recovered fluxes are measured power from the P1.4 GHz − M500 scaling relation. However, in
within the elliptical region and the > 2σrms region (see Fig. 11).
case of small halo (i.e. circle of radius RH = 264 kpc) the
The vertical dashed line indicates the upper limit for the halo flux
estimated upper limit (i.e. P1.4 GHz = (2.9±1.3)×1022 W Hz−1 )
(i.e. Fig. 11, c).
is ∼ 7 times below the P1.4 GHz − M500 relation. Our analysis
suggests that we can reasonably exclude the presence of a
small (RH = 264 kpc) radio halo in A1240, while we cannot
exclude the presence of a large elliptical radio halo extending
5 CONCLUSIONS
between the two relics, since in this case our upper limit is
A1240 is a galaxy cluster in the process of merging (Bonafede consistent with the P1.4 GHz − M500 correlation.
et al. 2009; Barrena et al. 2009). Previous radio observations
with the VLA (325 MHz and 1.4 GHz) by Bonafede et al.
(2009) characterised two radio relics in the peripheral re-
gions of the cluster. In this paper, we performed LOFAR ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
143 MHz observations of the cluster and combined these We thank the anonymous referees for the helpful com-
with archival GMRT 612 MHz and VLA 3 GHz data. With ments. DNH, TS, RJvW and HR acknowledge support from
the wide frequency range and deep observations, we pro- the ERC Advanced Investigator programme NewClusters
vided new measurements on the spectral and polarimetric 321271. GB and RC acknowledge partial support from grant
properties of the emission from the cluster relics and added PRIN-INAF2014. AB acknowledges support from the ERC-
further constraints on the existence of a radio halo. Below Stg17 714245 DRANOEL. HA acknowledges the support
we summarize our results. of NWO via a Veni grant. SRON is supported financially
by NWO, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Re-
• From the 143 MHz − 3 GHz spectral index map we search. GJW gratefully thanks the Leverhulme Trust for
measured a spectral gradient across the width of the relics funding. This paper is based (in part) on results obtained
A1240-1 and A1240-2. The spectral indices steepen from with LOFAR equipment. LOFAR (van Haarlem et al. 2013)
−0.94±0.05 and −0.97±0.05 at the outer edges to −1.18±0.05 is the Low Frequency Array designed and constructed by
and −1.23 ± 0.05 at the inner edges for A1240-1 and A1240- ASTRON. We thank the staff of the GMRT that made these
2, respectively. Using the spectral index values at the lo- observations possible. GMRT is run by the National Centre
cations of the shock fronts and assuming DSA, the corre- for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental
sponding Mach numbers for the shocks are M = 2.4 ± 0.1 Research. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a
and M = 2.3 ± 0.1, respectively. These Mach numbers are facility of the National Science Foundation operated under
significantly lower than those (i.e. MA1240-1 = 5.1+3.1
−1.1
and cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The
MA1240-2 = 4.0+1.1
−0.6
) estimated from the integrated spectral scientific results reported in this article are based in part on
indices. data obtained from the Chandra Data Archive, observations
• At 2 − 4 GHz, we detected polarized emission in the re- made by the Chandra X-ray Observatory and published pre-
gions of A1240-1 and A1240-2. The mean fractional polar- viously in cited articles. This research has made use of soft-
ization as measured from the VLA 480 MHz bandwidth data ware provided by the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC) in the
sets are 32 ± 4% and 17 ± 4% for A1240-1 and A1240-2, re- application packages CIAO, ChIPS, and Sherpa. This work
spectively. From these fractional polarization measurements was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of
we constrained the lower limits of the viewing angle of the Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under
merger axis to be 53±3◦ and 39±5◦ for A1240-1 and A1240-2, Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. We thank J. J. Harwood for
respectively. discussions on the possibility of modelling of spectral ageing
• The magnetic field to thermal pressure ratio was esti- of radio relics.

MNRAS 000, 1–17 (2017)

16 D. N. Hoang et al.
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1 Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, PO Box 9513,
NL-2300 RA Leiden, the Netherlands
2 Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON),
P.O. Box 2, 7990 AA Dwingeloo, The Netherlands
3 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden
Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
4 SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Sorbon-
nelaan 2, 3584 CA Utrecht, The Netherlands
5 IRA INAF, via P. Gobetti 101 40129 Bologna, Italy
6 Hamburger Sternwarte, University of Hamburg, Gojen-
bergsweg 112, 21029 Hamburg, Germany
7 Lawrence Livermore National Lab, 7000 East Avenue,
Livermore, CA 94550, USA
8 Department of Physics, University of California, One
Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA
9 SUPA, Institute for Astronomy, Royal Observatory, Black-
ford Hill, Edinburgh, EH9 3HJ, UK
10 Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università di
Bologna, via P. Gobetti 93/2, 40129 Bologna, Italy
11 Thüringer Landessternwarte, Sternwarte 5, 07778 Taut-
enburg, Germany
12 European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str.
2, 85748, Garching, Germany
13 Department of Physical Science, The Open University,
Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, England
14 Space Science Department, The Rutherford Appleton
Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon OX11 0NL, England

This paper has been typeset from a TEX/LATEX file prepared by

the author.

MNRAS 000, 1–17 (2017)