Spectral ageing: a new age perspective

Abstract

We present an up-to-date critique of the physical basis for the spectral ageing method. We find that the number of cases where this method may be meaningfully applied to deduce the ages of classical double radio sources is small indeed. This critique is much more than merely a re-expression of anxieties about the calibration of spectral ageing (which have been articulated by others in the past).

9 pages, 3 figures, published in `Particles & Fields in Radio Galaxies', PASP, eds RA Laing & KM Blundell

References in corpus (5)

• The Nature and Evolution of Classical Double Radio Sources from Complete Samples
• Evolutionary tracks of FRII sources through the P-D diagram
• The spectra and energies of classical double radio lobes
• Simulating Electron Transport and Synchrotron Emission in Radio Galaxies: Shock Acceleration and Synchrotron Aging in Three-Dimensional Flows
• Renewed Radio Activity of Age 370 years in the Extragalactic Source 0108+388