The Clustering Of Galaxies Around Radio-Loud AGNs

Abstract

We examine the hypothesis that mergers and close encounters between galaxies can fuel AGNs by increasing the rate at which gas accretes towards the central black hole. We compare the clustering of galaxies around radio-loud AGNs with the clustering around a population of radio-quiet galaxies with similar masses, colors and luminosities. Our catalog contains 2178 elliptical radio galaxies with flux densities greater than 2.8 mJy at 1.4 GHz from the 6dFGS survey. We find that radio AGNs with more than 200 times the median radio power have, on average, more close (r<160 kpc) companions than their radio-quiet counterparts, suggestive that mergers play a role in forming the most powerful radio galaxies. For ellipticals of fixed stellar mass, the radio power is not a function of large-scale environment nor halo mass, consistent with the radio powers of ellipticals varying by orders of magnitude over billions of years.

12 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (12)

• Radio sources in the 6dFGS: Local luminosity functions at 1.4 GHz for star-forming galaxies and radio-loud AGN
• On the prevalence of radio-loud AGN in brightest cluster galaxies: implications for AGN heating of cooling flows
• Fueling Low-Level AGN Activity Through the Stochastic Accretion of Cold Gas
• The 2dF-SDSS LRG and QSO (2SLAQ) Luminous Red Galaxy Survey
• Near-Infrared and Optical Luminosity Functions from the 6dF Galaxy Survey
• The host galaxies of luminous quasars
• The duty cycle of local radio galaxies
• Halo masses for optically-selected and for radio-loud AGN from clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing
• Radio galaxies in the 2SLAQ Luminous Red Galaxy Survey: I. The evolution of low-power radio galaxies to z~0.7
• The clustering of radio galaxies at z~0.55 from the 2SLAQ LRG survey
• The Weak Clustering of Gas-Rich Galaxies
• Radio AGN in 13,240 galaxy clusters from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Giant radio galaxies - II. Tracers of large-scale structure
• Radio Galaxy Zoo: The Distortion of Radio Galaxies by Galaxy Clusters
• The clustering of radio galaxies: biasing and evolution versus stellar mass
• Cluster candidates around low power radio-galaxies at z~1-2 in COSMOS
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): The environments of high- and low- excitation radio galaxies
• Deciphering the large-scale environment of radio galaxies in the local Universe: where do they born, grow and die?
• What sparks the radio-loud phase of nearby quasars?
• Deciphering the Large-Scale Environment of Radio Galaxies in the Local Universe II. A Statistical Analysis of Environmental Properties
• Satellites of Radio AGN in SDSS: Insights into AGN Triggering and Feedback
• Why radio quiet quasars are preferred over radio loud quasars regardless of environment and redshift
• Cosmic evolution of radio-excess AGNs in quiescent and star-forming galaxies across $0<z<4$
• The Infrared Medium-Deep Survey II: How to Trigger Radio-AGN? Hints from Their Environments
• Revisiting the clustering of narrow-line AGN in the local Universe: Joint dependence on stellar mass and color
• A new method to search for high redshift clusters using photometric redshifts
• The distribution of radio quiet active galactic nuclei in the star formation-stellar mass plane
• Raining in MKW 3s: a Chandra-MUSE analysis of X-ray cold filaments around 3CR 318.1
• How does environment affect the morphology of radio AGN?