THE TRIGGERING AND BIAS OF RADIO GALAXIES

Abstract

We present new results on the clustering and three-dimensional distribution of radio galaxies from the Texas-Oxford NVSS Structure (TONS) survey. The TONS survey was constructed to look at the distribution of radio galaxies in a region of moderate (0 < z < 0.5) redshifts by matching NVSS sources with objects in APM catalogues to obtain a sample of optically bright (R < 19.5), radio faint (1.4-GHz flux density S_1.4 > 3 mJy) radio galaxies over large areas on the sky. We find that redshift spikes, which represent large concentrations of radio galaxies which trace (~ 100 Mpc^3) super-structures are a common phenomena in these surveys. Under the assumption of quasi-linear structure formation theory and a canonical radio galaxy bias, the structures represent ~ 4-5 sigma peaks in the primordial density field and their expected number is low. The most plausible explanation for these low probabilities is an increase in the radio galaxy bias with redshift. To investigate potential mechanisms which have triggered the radio activity in these galaxies - and hence may account for an increase in the bias of this population, we performed imaging studies of the cluster environment of the radio galaxies in super-structure regions. Preliminary results show that these radio galaxies may reside preferentially at the edges of rich clusters. If radio galaxies are preferentially triggered as they fall towards rich clusters then they would effectively adopt the cluster bias.