Environments of Luminous Low-frequency Radio Galaxies Since Cosmic Noon: Jet-mode Feedback Dominates in Groups

Abstract

Coupling between relativistic jets launched by accreting supermassive black holes and the surrounding gaseous media is a vital ingredient in galaxy evolution models. To constrain the environments in which this feedback takes place over cosmic time, we study the host-halo properties of luminous low-frequency radio galaxies ( L _150 MHz ≳ 10 ^25.25 W Hz ^−1 ) selected with the International Low-Frequency Array Telescope out to z ∼ 2 through tomographic clustering and cosmic microwave background lensing measurements. We find that these systems occupy halos characteristic of galaxy groups ( M _h = 10 ^13 –10 ^14 h ^−1 M _⊙ ), evolving at a rate consistent with the mean growth rate of halos over the past ∼10 Gyr. The coevolution of the clustering and the luminosity function reveals that the duty cycle of these systems is of order ∼10% but has been mildly increasing since z ∼ 2, while the duty cycle of quasars has been declining. We estimate the characteristic kinetic heating power injected by powerful jets per halo as a function of mass, and compare to the same quantity injected by quasar winds. We find that powerful jet heating dominates over quasar winds in halos M _h ≳ 10 ^13 h ^−1 M _⊙ at z < 2. These results conform to the paradigm of galaxy evolution in which mechanical jet power feedback is the dominant heating mechanism of the gas content of groups and clusters.

Keywords

• Active galactic nuclei
• Large-scale structure of the universe
• Radio galaxies
• Galaxy evolution
• Clustering