| | |
| | |
Stat |
Members: 3645 Articles: 2'501'711 Articles rated: 2609
20 April 2024 |
|
| | | |
|
Article overview
| |
|
On The Parent Population of Radio Galaxies and the FRI - FRII Dichotomy | Riccardo Scarpa
; C. Megan Urry
; | Date: |
10 Apr 2001 | Subject: | astro-ph | Affiliation: | E.S.O.), C. Megan Urry (STScI | Abstract: | We test the hypothesis that radio galaxies are a random subset of otherwise normal elliptical galaxies. Starting with the observed optical luminosity functions for elliptical galaxies, we show that the probability of an elliptical forming a radio source is a continuous, increasing function of optical luminosity, proportional to L squared. With this probability function and the luminosity function of normal elliptical galaxies as input to Monte Carlo simulations, we reproduce the observed distribution of radio galaxies in the radio-optical luminosity plane. Our results show that radio galaxies are a luminosity-biased but otherwise random sample of elliptical galaxies. This unified view of radio-loud and radio-quiet ellipticals also explains the well known difference of ~0.5 mag in average optical luminosity between FRI and FRII radio galaxies as a simple selection effect. Specifically, FRII appear preferentially in smaller galaxies because both radio and optical luminosity functions are steep, so there is a negligible probability of observing a powerful radio source associated with a bright galaxy; no intrinsic physical differences between FRI and FRII host galaxies are required. | Source: | arXiv, astro-ph/0104183 | Services: | Forum | Review | PDF | Favorites |
|
|
No review found.
Did you like this article?
Note: answers to reviews or questions about the article must be posted in the forum section.
Authors are not allowed to review their own article. They can use the forum section.
browser Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)
|
| |
|
|
|
| News, job offers and information for researchers and scientists:
| |