Do radio mini-halos and gas heating in cool-core clusters have a common origin?

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In this letter we present a study of the central regions of cool-core clusters hosting radio mini-halos, which are diffuse synchrotron sources extended on cluster-scales surrounding the radio-loud brightest cluster galaxy. We aim to investigate the interplay between the thermal and non-thermal components in the intra-cluster medium in order to get more insights into these radio sources, whose nature is still unclear. It has recently been proposed that turbulence plays a role for heating the gas in cool cores. By assuming that mini-halos are powered by the same turbulence, we expect that the integrated radio luminosity of mini-halos, νPν, depends on the cooling flow power, P CF, which in turn constrains the energy available for the non-thermal components and emission in the cool-core region. We carried out a homogeneous re-analysis of X-ray Chandra data of the largest sample of cool-core clusters hosting radio mini-halos currently available (20 objects), finding a quasi-linear correlation, νPν ∝ P CF⁰.⁸. We show that the scenario of a common origin of radio mini-halos and gas heating in cool-core clusters is energetically viable, provided that mini-halos trace regions where the magnetic field strength is B ≫ 0.5 μG.