Jet/environment interactions in low-power radio galaxies

Abstract

The interactions between low-power radio galaxies and their environments are thought to play a crucial role in supplying energy to offset cooling in the centres of groups and clusters. Such interactions are also important in determining large-scale radio structures and radio-source dynamics. I will discuss new XMM-Newton observations of the hot-gas environments of a representative sample of nine FRI radio galaxies, which show strong evidence for the importance of such interactions (including evidence for heating) and provide important new constraints on source dynamics and particle content. In particular I will show that the widely discussed apparent imbalance between the internal lobe pressure available from relativistic electrons and magnetic field and the external pressure of hot gas correlates with radio structure, so that naked jets require a large contribution from non-radiating particles, whereas lobed sources do not. This may provide the first direct observational evidence that entrainment of the ICM supplies the missing pressure.