Modelling giant radio halos Doctoral Thesis Award Lecture 2012

We review models for giant radio halos in clusters of galaxies, with a focus on numerical and theoretical work. After summarising the most important observations of these objects, we present an introduction to the theoretical aspects of hadronic models. We compare these models with observations using simulations and find severe problems for hadronic models. We give a short introduction to reacceleration models and show results from the first simulation of CRe reacceleration in cluster mergers. We find that in-line with previous theoretical work, reacceleration models are able to elegantly explain main observables of giant radio halos. (© 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)