The environment of radio sources in the VLA-COSMOS Survey field

Abstract

This work studies the correlation among environmental density and radio AGN presence up to \(z = 2\). Using data from the photometric COSMOS survey and its radio 1.4 GHz follow-up (VLA-COSMOS), a sample of radio AGNs has been defined. The environment was studied using the richness distributions inside a parallelepiped with base side of 1 Mpc and height proportional to the photometric redshift precision. Radio AGNs are found to be always located in environments significantly richer than those around galaxies with no radio emission. Moreover, a distinction based on radio AGN power shows that the significance of the environmental effect is only maintained for low-power radio sources. The results of this work show that denser environments play a significant role in enhancing the probability that a galaxy hosts a radio AGN and, in particular, low-power ones.