Radio AGN in 13,240 galaxy clusters from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Abstract

We correlate the positions of 13,240 Brightest Cluster Galaxies (BCGs) with 0.1 <= z <= 0.3 from the maxBCG catalog with radio sources from the FIRST survey to study the sizes and distributions of radio AGN in galaxy clusters. We find that 19.7% of our BCGs are associated with FIRST sources, and this fraction depends on the stellar mass of the BCG, and to a lesser extent on the richness of the parent cluster (in the sense of increasing radio loudness with increasing mass). The intrinsic size of the radio emission associated with the BCGs peaks at 55 kpc, with a tail extending to 200 kpc. The radio power of the extended sources places them on the divide between FR I and FR II type sources, while sources compact in the radio tend to be somewhat less radio-luminous. We also detect an excess of radio sources associated with the cluster, instead of with the BCG itself, extending out to ~1.4 Mpc.

14 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in ApJL

References in corpus (6)

• How special are Brightest Group and Cluster Galaxies?
• On the prevalence of radio-loud AGN in brightest cluster galaxies: implications for AGN heating of cooling flows
• Signals from the Noise: Image Stacking for Quasars in the FIRST Survey
• Minkowski's Object: A Starburst Triggered by a Radio Jet, Revisited
• Radio Sources in Galaxy Clusters: Radial Distribution, and 1.4 GHz and K-band Bivariate Luminosity Function
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Cited by in corpus (2)

• The Coincidence of Nuclear Star Clusters and Active Galactic Nuclei
• The Lifetime of FRIIs in Groups and Clusters: Implications for Radio-Mode Feedback