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© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. High-resolution X-ray spectroscopy with Hitomi was expected to resolve the origin of the faint unidentified E ≈ 3.5 keV emission line reported in several low-resolution studies of various massive systems, such as galaxies and clusters, including the Perseus cluster. We have analyzed the Hitomi first-light observation of the Perseus cluster. The emission line expected for Perseus based on the XMM-Newton signal from the large cluster sample under the dark matter decay scenario is too faint to be detectable in the Hitomi data. However, the previously reported 3.5 keV flux from Perseus was anomalously high compared to the sample-based prediction. We find no unidentified line at the reported high flux level. Taking into account the XMM measurement uncertainties for this region, the inconsistency with Hitomi is at a 99% significance for a broad dark matter line and at 99.7% for a narrow line from the gas. We do not find anomalously high fluxes of the nearby faint K line or the Ar satellite line that were proposed as explanations for the earlier 3.5 keV detections. We do find a hint of a broad excess near the energies of high-n transitions of S xvi (E ≃ 3.44 keV rest-frame) - a possible signature of charge exchange in the molecular nebula and another proposed explanation for the unidentified line. While its energy is consistent with XMM pn detections, it is unlikely to explain the MOS signal. A confirmation of this interesting feature has to wait for a more sensitive observation with a future calorimeter experiment.

Clusters of galaxies are the most massive gravitationally bound objects in the Universe and are still forming. They are thus important probes of cosmological parameters and many astrophysical processes. However, knowledge of the dynamics of the pervasive hot gas, the mass of which is much larger than the combined mass of all the stars in the cluster, is lacking. Such knowledge would enable insights into the injection of mechanical energy by the central supermassive black hole and the use of hydrostatic equilibrium for determining cluster masses. X-rays from the core of the Perseus cluster are emitted by the 50-million-kelvin diffuse hot plasma filling its gravitational potential well. The active galactic nucleus of the central galaxy NGC 1275 is pumping jetted energy into the surrounding intracluster medium, creating buoyant bubbles filled with relativistic plasma. These bubbles probably induce motions in the intracluster medium and heat the inner gas, preventing runaway radiative cooling - a process known as active galactic nucleus feedback. Here we report X-ray observations of the core of the Perseus cluster, which reveal a remarkably quiescent atmosphere in which the gas has a line-of-sight velocity dispersion of 164 ± 10 kilometres per second in the region 30-60 kiloparsecs from the central nucleus. A gradient in the line-of-sight velocity of 150 ± 70 kilometres per second is found across the 60-kiloparsec image of the cluster core. Turbulent pressure support in the gas is four per cent of the thermodynamic pressure, with large-scale shear at most doubling this estimate. We infer that a total cluster mass determined from hydrostatic equilibrium in a central region would require little correction for turbulent pressure., Please visit the publisher's website for funding information.