Giant Radio Sources: Evolution and GMRT Observations

Abstract

We study the evolution of giant radio sources and show that they are less luminous than the smaller-sized sources, and are roughly consistent with the evolutionary scenarios where the smaller-sized sources evolve to giants undergoing radiative and expansion losses. Inverse-Compton radiation losses due to the microwave background radiation dominates over the synchrotron losses for giant sources, while for the smaller sources, the latter dominates. We show that giant radio galaxies and quasars are consistent with the unified scheme, and their large sizes are not due to stronger cores. We also present preliminary GMRT images of three giant sources.