Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): A “No Smoking” Zone for Giant Elliptical Galaxies?
- School of Astronomy, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Tehran, 19395-5746 (Iran, Islamic Republic of)
- Australian Astronomical Observatory, P.O. Box 915, North Ryde, NSW 1670 (Australia)
- Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, P.O. Box 218, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122 (Australia)
- International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009 (Australia)
- Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John Moores University, IC2, Liverpool Science Park, 146 Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L3 5RF (United Kingdom)
- School of Physics, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800 (Australia)
- Astrophysics Group, The University of Western Cape, Robert Sobukwe Road, Bellville 7530 (South Africa)
- SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Landleven 12, 9747 AD, Groningen (Netherlands)
We study the radio emission of the most massive galaxies in a sample of dynamically relaxed and unrelaxed galaxy groups from the Galaxy and Mass Assembly survey. The dynamical state of the group is defined by the stellar dominance of the brightest group galaxy (BGG), e.g., the luminosity gap between the two most luminous members, and the offset between the position of the BGG and the luminosity centroid of the group. We find that the radio luminosity of the largest galaxy in the group strongly depends on its environment, such that the BGGs in dynamically young (evolving) groups are an order of magnitude more luminous in the radio than those with a similar stellar mass but residing in dynamically old (relaxed) groups. This observation has been successfully reproduced by a newly developed semi-analytic model that allows us to explore the various causes of these findings. We find that the fraction of radio-loud BGGs in the observed dynamically young groups is ∼2 times that of the dynamically old groups. We discuss the implications of this observational constraint on the central galaxy properties in the context of galaxy mergers and the super massive black hole accretion rate.
- OSTI ID:
- 22663498
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 842, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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