Exploring galaxy clusters using bent jet AGNs

Radio galaxies are active galactic nuclei (AGNs) that often tend to show linear features called jets, which are channels of relativistic plasma through which energy is continuously transported away from the central engine. However, some of these jets appear bent back. The conventional explanation is that they are bent under ram pressure from a dense, gaseous medium through which the host galaxy moves. We conducted a study using data from the ongoing Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS) that combines high spatial resolution, and sensitivity centered around 3 GHz. A pre-publication catalog (Y. Gordon et al., in prep) is being searched for bent double radio sources, aided by jet morphology parameters within the catalog, such as misalignment angles. It is estimated that approximately (15± 2) % of the double radio sources found were bent. To gain a better understanding of the morphologies of radio sources that exist in clusters, the double radio source catalog was then cross matched to the Abell catalog of 4,076 rich galaxy clusters. We found 176 visually confirmed radio galaxies within small on-sky angles of 0.1 degrees to the cluster centers. The preliminary results show that (26±3) % of these radio galaxies are bent. We will compare the properties of galaxy clusters hosting bent double radio sources to those without to assess, for example, the dependence of bending on cluster richness, dynamical state, and other indicators of the intra-cluster medium. To extend our sample size, we will look at the catalog of 132,684 clusters of galaxies identified from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III(SDSS-III) published by Wen et al. (2012, ApJS,199,34).

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation's REU program in Astrophysics through NSF award AST-2150222. Additional support was provided by the Radio Astronomy Data Imaging and Analysis Lab (RADIAL) Research & Training Experience program through the National Radio Astronomy Observatory; and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's Creating Equitable Pathways to STEM Graduate Education Program.