巨射电星系(Giant Radio Galaxies,简称GRG)是一种物理上巨大的射电源,其辐射范围远远超出其所在星系的环境。它们的偏振特性受到在Mpc尺度上渗透星系际介质的约束不良的磁场的影响。现在可以用LOFAR对这类射电源进行低频($<$ 200 MHz)极化研究。在这里,我们调查的偏振特性和法拉第旋转测量(RM)的目录中检测到的GRG的LoTSS。这是第一次对根据物理尺寸选择的射电星系进行大样本低频偏振研究。我们探索了它们的低密度环境的磁离子特性,并利用它们射电瓣的法拉第旋转特性探测星系际磁场。我们使用RM合成在120-168 MHz频段搜索极化发射,并推导出RM和分数极化的每个检测到的源组件。我们研究了1.4 GHz和144 MHz之间的去极化使用NVSS的图像。从240个GRG的样本中,我们检测到37个源的偏振,所有的总通量密度超过56毫焦耳。在1.4 GHz和144 MHz下检测到的GRG的分数极化与少量法拉第去极化(法拉第色散$<$ 0.3 rad m $^{-2}$)一致。我们的分析表明,叶扩展到一个低密度($<10^{-5}$ cm $^{-3}$)的局部环境中渗透的弱磁场($<$ 0.1 $μ$ G)与波动的规模为3至25千秒差距。前景星系团的存在似乎影响偏振探测率高达2 R $_{500}$。在一般情况下,这项工作证明了LOFAR的能力,以量化的稀薄环境中,这些GRG存在,并强调他们作为一个很好的统计样本使用的高精度探头的磁场在星系际介质和银河系。
英文摘要:
Giant radio galaxies (GRGs) are physically large radio sources that extend well beyond their host galaxy environment. Their polarization properties are affected by the poorly constrained magnetic field that permeates the intergalactic medium on Mpc scales. A low frequency ($<$ 200 MHz) polarization study of this class of radio sources is now possible with LOFAR. Here we investigate the polarization properties and Faraday rotation measure (RM) of a catalog of GRGs detected in the LoTSS. This is the first low-frequency polarization study of a large sample of radio galaxies selected on their physical size. We explore the magneto-ionic properties of their under-dense environment and probe intergalactic magnetic fields using the Faraday rotation properties of their radio lobes. We use RM synthesis in the 120-168 MHz band to search for polarized emission and to derive the RM and fractional polarization of each detected source component. We study the depolarization between 1.4 GHz and 144 MHz using images from the NVSS. From a sample of 240 GRGs, we detected 37 sources in polarization, all with a total flux density above 56 mJy. The fractional polarization of the detected GRGs at 1.4 GHz and 144 MHz is consistent with a small amount of Faraday depolarization (a Faraday dispersion $<$ 0.3 rad m$^{-2}$). Our analysis shows that the lobes are expanding into a low-density ($<10^{-5}$ cm$^{-3}$) local environment permeated by weak magnetic fields ($<$0.1 $μ$G) with fluctuations on scales of 3 to 25 kpc. The presence of foreground galaxy clusters appears to influence the polarization detection rate up to 2R$_{500}$. In general, this work demonstrates the ability of LOFAR to quantify the rarefied environments in which these GRGs exist and highlights them as an excellent statistical sample to use as high precision probes of magnetic fields in the intergalactic medium and the Milky Way.
The discovery of faint FR~I radio jets in the nearby elliptical galaxy NGC 5322 is reported here using 144 MHz LOFAR image. The jets have an angular extent of $\sim40$ arcmin or a projected physical extent of $\sim350$ kpc. The faint jets remain well collimated and disappear in the intergalactic medium, without any visible hotspot or radio lobes. The jets detected up to $\sim20$ kpc extent at higher frequencies are relatively bright within the optical extent of the galaxy but become faint abruptly outside, where detection is made only in the LOFAR image. The total radio luminosity of the galax…
Investigating the radio emission in the Perseus cluster with LOFAR sub-80 MHz LBA
INAF – Istituto di Radioastromia(意大利国家天体物理研究所射电天文学研究所);Leiden Observatory, Leiden University(莱顿大学莱顿天文台);Université Laval(拉瓦尔大学);Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto(多伦多大学邓普天文学与天体物理学研究所);Università di Bologna(博洛尼亚大学)
Giant radio galaxies (GRGs), with extended structures reaching hundreds of kpc, are among the most spectacular examples of ejection of relativistic plasma from super-massive black holes. In this work, third of a series, we present LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) images at 144 MHz, collected in the framework of the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey Data Release 2 (LoTSS DR2), for nine sources extracted from our sample of hard X-ray selected GRGs (HXGRG, i.e. from INTEGRAL/IBIS and Swift/BAT catalogues at >20 keV). Thanks to the resolution and sensitivity of LoTSS, we could probe the complex morphology of …
We study the properties and the origin of the radio emission in the most luminous early-type galaxies (ETGs) in the nearby Universe (MK<-25, recession velocity < 7,500 km/s) as seen by the 150 MHz Low-Frequency ARray (LOFAR) observations. LOFAR images are available for 188 of these giant ETGs (gETGs) and 146 (78%) of them are detected above a typical luminosity of ~10E21 W/Hz. They show a large spread in power, reaching up to ~10E26 W/Hz. We confirm a positive link between the stellar luminosity of gETGs and their median radio power, the detection rate, and the fraction of extended sources. Ab…
The warm-hot intergalactic medium (warm-hot IGM, or WHIM) pervades the filaments of the Cosmic Web and harbours half of the Universe's baryons. The WHIM's thermodynamic properties are notoriously hard to measure. Here we estimate a galaxy group - WHIM boundary temperature using a new method. In particular, we use a radio image of the giant radio galaxy (giant RG, or GRG) created by NGC 6185, a massive nearby spiral. We analyse this extraordinary object with a Bayesian 3D lobe model and deduce an equipartition pressure $P_\mathrm{eq} = 6 \cdot 10^{-16}\ \mathrm{Pa}$ -- among the lowest found in…
Diffuse radio emission at the centre of galaxy clusters has been observed both in merging clusters on scales of Mpc, called giant radio haloes, and in relaxed systems with a cool-core on smaller scales, named mini haloes. Giant radio haloes and mini haloes are thought to be distinct classes of sources. However, recent observations have revealed the presence of diffuse radio emission on Mpc scales in clusters that do not show strong dynamical activity. RX J1720.1+2638 is a cool-core cluster, presenting both a bright central mini halo and a fainter diffuse, steep-spectrum emission extending beyo…
Context. Radio halos are megaparsec-scale diffuse radio sources{ mostly} located at the centres of merging galaxy clusters. The common mechanism invoked to explain their origin is the re-acceleration of relativistic particles caused by large-scale turbulence. Aims. Current re-acceleration models predict that a significant number of halos at high redshift should be characterised by very steep spectra ($α<-1.5$) because of increasing inverse Compton energy losses. In this paper, we investigate the spectral index properties of a sample of nine clusters selected from the second Planck Sunyaev-Zel'…
Exploring the properties of low-frequency radio emission and magnetic fields in a sample of compact galaxy groups using the LOFAR Two-Metre Sky Survey (LoTSS)
We present for the first time a study of peculiar giant radio galaxy (GRG) J223301+131502 using deep multi-frequency radio observations from GMRT (323, 612, and 1300 MHz) and LOFAR (144 MHz) along with optical spectroscopic observations with the WHT~4.2m optical telescope. Our observations have firmly established its redshift of 0.09956 and unveiled its exceptional jet structure extending more than $\sim$ 200 kpc leading to a peculiar kink structure of $\sim$ 100 kpc. We measure the overall size of this GRG to be $\sim$ 1.83 Mpc; it exhibits lobes without any prominent hotspots and closely res…
Giant radio galaxies (GRGs) are radio galaxies that have projected linear extents of more than 700 kpc or 1 Mpc, depending on definition. We have carried out a careful visual inspection in search of GRGs of the Bootes LOFAR Deep Field (BLDF) image at 150 MHz. We identified 74 GRGs with a projected size larger than 0.7 Mpc of which 38 are larger than 1 Mpc. The resulting GRG sky density is about 2.8 (1.43) GRGs per square degree for GRGs with linear size larger than 0.7 (1) Mpc. We studied their radio properties and the accretion state of the host galaxies using deep optical and infrared survey…
Transformer-Based Source Detection and Morphological Classification in LOFAR Deep-Field Continuum Images
University of Oxford(牛津大学);Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias(加那利天体物理研究所);Universidad de La Laguna(拉古纳大学);University of Malta(马耳他大学);Anqing Normal University(安庆师范大学);University of Science and Technology of China(中国科学技术大学)
Star Formation and the Interstellar Medium In Nearby Tidal Streams (SAINTS): Spitzer Mid-infrared Spectroscopy and Imaging of Intergalactic Star-forming Objects
Giant radio sources (GRSs) defined to be > 0.7 Mpc are the largest single objects in the Universe and can be associated with both galaxies (GRGs) and quasars (GRQs). They are important for understanding the evolution of radio galaxies and quasars whose sizes range from pc to Mpc scales and are also valuable probes of their environment. These radio-loud active galactic nuclei (RLAGN) interact with the interstellar medium of the host galaxy on small scales and the large-scale intracluster or intergalactic medium for the GRSs. With several new and sensitive surveys over the last few years, the nu…
Collisions between galaxy clusters dissipate enormous amounts of energy in the intra-cluster medium (ICM) through turbulence and shocks. In the process, Mpc-scale diffuse synchrotron emission in form of radio halos and relics can form. However, little is known about the very early phase of the collision. We used deep radio observations from 53 MHz to 1.5 GHz to study the pre-merging galaxy clusters A1758N and A1758S that are $\sim2$ Mpc apart. We confirm the presence of a giant bridge of radio emission connecting the two systems that was reported only tentatively in our earlier work. This is t…
We test the hypothesis that environments play a key role in enabling the growth of enormous radio structures spanning more than 700 kpc, an extreme population of radio galaxies called giant radio galaxies (GRGs). To achieve this, we explore (1) the relationships between the occurrence of GRGs and the surface number density of surrounding galaxies, including satellite galaxies and galaxies from neighboring halos, as well as (2) the GRG locations towards large-scale structures. The analysis is done by making use of a homogeneous sample of 110 GRGs detected from the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey in …
Stellar photometry in nine fields around the giant elliptical galaxy M87 in the Virgo cluster is obtained from archival images of the Hubble Space Telescope. The resulting Hertzsprung--Russell diagrams show populated red-giant and AGB branches. The position of the tip of the red-giant branch (the TRGB discontinuity) is found to vary with galactocentric distance. This variation can be interpreted as the effect of metal-rich red giants on the procedure of the measurement of the TRGB discontinuity or as a consequence of the existence of a weak gas-and-dust cloud around M87 extending out to $10^\p…
In order to study the ram-pressure interaction between radio galaxies and the intracluster medium, we analyse a sample of 208 highly-bent narrow-angle tail radio sources (NATs) in clusters, detected by the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey. For NATs within $7\,R_{500}$ of the cluster centre, we find that their tails are distributed anisotropically with a strong tendency to be bent radially away from the cluster, which suggests that they are predominantly on radially inbound orbits. Within $0.5\,R_{500}$, we also observe an excess of NATs with their jets bent towards the cluster core, indicating that …
We discover what is in projection the largest known structure of galactic origin: a giant radio galaxy with a projected proper length of $4.99 \pm 0.04\ \mathrm{Mpc}$. The source, named Alcyoneus, was first identified in low-resolution LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey images from which angularly compact sources had been removed. Being an extreme example in its class, Alcyoneus could shed light on the main mechanisms that drive radio galaxy growth. We find that - beyond geometry - Alcyoneus and its host galaxy appear suspiciously ordinary: the total low-frequency luminosity density, stellar mass and …
Probing AGN duty cycle and cluster-driven morphology in a giant episodic radio galaxy
Midnapore City College(金达布尔城市学院);Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education(马纳帕尔高等教育局马纳帕尔自然科学中心);Obserwatorium Astronomiczne, Uniwersytet Jagielloński(雅盖隆大学天文台)