No Arabic abstract
Young radio galaxies (YRGs) provide an ideal laboratory to explore the connection between accretion disk and radio jet thanks to their recent jet formation. We investigate the relationship between the emission-line properties, the black hole accretion rate, and the radio properties using a sample of 34 low-redshift (z < 0.4) YRGs. We classify YRGs as high-excitation galaxies (HEGs) and low-excitation galaxies (LEGs) based on the flux ratio of high-ionization to low-ionization emission lines. Using the H{alpha} luminosities as a proxy of accretion rate, we find that HEGs in YRGs have sim1 dex higher Eddington ratios than LEGs in YRGs, suggesting that HEGs have higher mass accretion rate or higher radiative efficiency than LEGs. In agreement with previous studies, we find that the luminosities of emission lines, in particular H{alpha}, are correlated with radio core luminosity, suggesting that accretion and young radio activities are fundamentally connected.
Fanaroff-Riley II low-excitation radio galaxies (FRII-LERGs) are characterized by weak nuclear excitation on pc-scales and by properties typical of powerful FRIIs (defined as high-excitation, hereafter HERGs/BLRGs) on kp-scales. Since a link between the accretion properties and the power of the produced jets is expected both from theory and observations, their nature is still debated. In this work we investigate the X-ray properties of a complete sample of 19 FRII-LERGs belonging to the 3CR catalog, exploiting Chandra and XMM-Newton archival data. We also analyze 32 FRII-HERGs/BLRGs with Chandra data as a control sample. We compared FRII-LERG and FRII-HERG/BLRG X-ray properties and optical data available in literature to obtain a wide outlook of their behavior. The low accretion rate estimates for FRII-LERGs, from both X-ray and optical bands, allow us to firmly reject the hypothesis for that they are the highly obscured counterpart of powerful FRII-HERGs/BLRGs. Therefore, at least two hypothesis can be invoked to explain the FRII-LERGs nature: (i) they are evolving from classical FRIIs because of the depletion of accreting cold gas in the nuclear region, while the extended radio emission is the heritage of a past efficiently accreting activity; (ii) they are an intrinsically distinct class of objects with respect to classical FRIs/FRIIs. Surprisingly, in this direction a correlation between accretion rates and environmental richness is found in our sample. The richer the environment, the more inefficient is the accretion. In this framework, the FRII-LERGs are intermediate between FRIs and FRII-HERGs/BLRGs both in terms of accretion rate and environment.
We use the integrated polarized radio emission at 1.4 GHz ($Pi_{rm 1.4,GHz}$) from a large sample of AGN (796 sources at redshifts $z<0.7$) to study the large-scale magnetic field properties of radio galaxies in relation to the host galaxy accretion state. We find a fundamental difference in $Pi_{rm 1.4,GHz}$ between radiative-mode AGN (i.e. high-excitation radio galaxies, HERGs, and radio-loud QSOs) and jet-mode AGN (i.e. low-excitation radio galaxies, LERGs). While LERGs can achieve a wide range of $Pi_{rm 1.4,GHz}$ (up to $sim$$30%$), the HERGs and radio-loud QSOs are limited to $Pi_{rm 1.4,GHz} lesssim 15%$. A difference in $Pi_{rm 1.4,GHz}$ is also seen when the sample is divided at 0.5% of the total Eddington-scaled accretion rate, where the weakly accreting sources can attain higher values of $Pi_{rm 1.4,GHz}$. We do not find any clear evidence that this is driven by intrinsic magnetic field differences of the different radio morphological classes. Instead, we attribute the differences in $Pi_{rm 1.4,GHz}$ to the local environments of the radio sources, in terms of both the ambient gas density and the magnetoionic properties of this gas. Thus, not only are different large-scale gaseous environments potentially responsible for the different accretion states of HERGs and LERGs, we argue that the large-scale magnetised environments may also be important for the formation of powerful AGN jets. Upcoming high angular resolution and broadband radio polarization surveys will provide the high precision Faraday rotation measure and depolarization data required to robustly test this claim.
We study the environments of low- and high- excitation radio galaxies (LERGs and HERGs respectively) in the redshift range $0.01 < z < 0.4$, using a sample of 399 radio galaxies and environmental measurements from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. In our analysis we use the fifth nearest neighbour density ($Sigma_{5}$) and the GAMA galaxy groups catalogue (G3Cv6) and construct control samples of galaxies matched in {update stellar mass and colour} to the radio-detected sample. We find that LERGs and HERGs exist in different environments and that this difference is dependent on radio luminosity. High-luminosity LERGs ($L_{rm NVSS} gtrsim 10^{24}$ W Hz$^{-1}$) lie in much denser environments than a matched radio-quiet control sample (about three times as dense, as measured by $Sigma_{5}$), and are more likely to be members of galaxy groups ($82^{+5}_{-7}$ percent of LERGs are in GAMA groups, compared to $58^{+3}_{-3}$ percent of the control sample). In contrast, the environments of the HERGs and lower luminosity LERGs are indistinguishable from that of a matched control sample. Our results imply that high-luminosity LERGs lie in more massive haloes than non-radio galaxies of similar stellar mass and colour, in agreement with earlier studies (Wake et al. 2008; Donoso et al. 2010). When we control for the preference of LERGs to be found in groups, both high- and low- luminosity LERGs are found in higher-mass haloes ($sim 0.2$ dex; at least 97 percent significant) than the non-radio control sample.
Understanding the evolution of accretion activity is fundamental to our understanding of how galaxies form and evolve over the history of the Universe. We analyse a complete sample of 27 radio galaxies which includes both high-excitation (HEGs) and low excitation galaxies (LEGs), spanning a narrow redshift range of 0.9 < z < 1.1 and covering a factor of ~1000 in radio luminosity. Using data from the Spitzer Space Telescope combined with ground-based optical and near-infrared imaging, we show that the host galaxies have masses in the range of 10.7 < log (M /M_sun) < 12.0 with HEGs and LEGs exhibiting no difference in their mass distributions. We also find that HEGs accrete at significantly higher rates than LEGs, with the HEG/LEG division lying at an Eddington ratio of ~0.04, which is in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions of where the accretion rate becomes radiatively inefficient, thus supporting the idea of HEGs and LEGs being powered by different modes of accretion. Our study also shows that at least up to L_151MHz ~3x10^27 W /Hz /sr, HEGs and LEGs are indistinguishable in terms of their radio properties. From this result we infer that, at least for the lower radio luminosity range, another factor besides accretion rate must play an important role in the process of triggering jet activity.
In the local Universe, there is a handful of dwarf compact star-forming galaxies with extremely low oxygen abundances. It has been proposed that they are young, having formed a large fraction of their stellar mass during their last few hundred Myr. However, little is known about the fraction of young stellar populations in more massive galaxies. In a previous article, we analyzed 280 000 SDSS spectra to identify a surprisingly large sample of more massive Very Young Galaxies (VYGs), defined to have formed at least $50%$ of their stellar mass within the last 1 Gyr. Here, we investigate in detail the properties of a subsample of 207 galaxies that are VYGs according to all three of our spectral models. We compare their properties with those of control sample galaxies (CSGs). We find that VYGs tend to have higher surface brightness and to be more compact, dusty, asymmetric, and clumpy than CSGs. Analysis of a subsample with HI detections reveals that VYGs are more gas-rich than CSGs. VYGs tend to reside more in the inner parts of low-mass groups and are twice as likely to be interacting with a neighbour galaxy than CSGs. On the other hand, VYGs and CSGs have similar gas metallicities and large scale environments (relative to filaments and voids). These results suggest that gas-rich interactions and mergers are the main mechanisms responsible for the recent triggering of star formation in low-redshift VYGs, except for the lowest mass VYGs, where the starbursts may arise from a mixture of mergers and gas infall.