The Gaseous Environments of Radio Galaxies

Abstract

X-ray emission traces the gaseous environments of radio sources. The medium must be present for jet confinement, but what are its influence on jet fuelling, dynamics, propagation, and disruption? The observational situation is both complicated and enriched by radio sources being multi-component X-ray emitters, with several possible regions of non-thermal emission. Recent work, primarily based on sensitive ROSAT pointings, is used to contrast the X-ray emission and environments of radio sources with (a) low power, (b) high power at high redshift, (c) high power at lower redshift, and (d) GHz peaked spectrum emission. The trends in external gas density and pressure near extended radio structures are reviewed. Imminently-available X-ray measurements with vastly improved resolution and sensitivity have great potential for resolving many open issues.

20 pages, including 11 figures, using elsart.sty to appear in `Life Cycles of Radio Galaxies' ed. J Biretta et al., New Astronomy Reviews (Elsevier Science)

References in corpus (9)

• An X-ray Spectral Survey of Radio-Loud AGN With ASCA
• ROSAT X-ray observations of 3CRR radio sources
• The environments of FRII radio sources
• X-ray-emitting Atmospheres of B2 Radio Galaxies
• Radio, optical and X-ray nuclei in nearby 3CRR radio galaxies
• X-ray observations of low-power radio galaxies from the B2 catalogue
• Hard X-ray emission from elliptical galaxies
• Detection of X-ray emission from the host clusters of 3CR quasars
• A spectroscopic study of NGC 6251 and its companion galaxies

Cited by in corpus (5)

• The nuclear X-ray emission of nearby early-type galaxies
• Extended X-ray emission at high redshifts: radio galaxies versus clusters
• Chandra Observations of the X-ray Environment of BL Lacs
• Peering Into the Extended X-ray Emission on Megaparsec Scale in 3C 187
• On the origin of two unidentified radio/X-ray sources discovered with XMM-Newton