The Density of 1-Jansky Sources Around Zwicky Clusters

Abstract

In a recent paper by Rodrigues-Williams \& Hogan (RH94), a correlation between high-redshift, optically-selected QSOs and Zwicky clusters was reported at a very high significance level. Due to the fairly bright flux threshold of the cluster sample, these correlations cannot be interpreted as being due to an environmental effect of the clusters on the quasar activity. The most likely interpretation employed in RH94 was the effect of gravitational lensing by the foreground clusters, though the required magnification to explain the observed correlations has to be considerably higher than obtained from simple mass models for the clusters. We have repeated the analysis of RH94 using a different QSO sample, namely radio quasars and radio galaxies from the 1-Jy sample. In accordance with RH, we detect a statistically significant correlation between Zwicky clusters and 1-Jy sources with intermediate redshift ($z\approx 1$), but fail to detect significant effects for higher-redshift sources. In addition, we detect a highly significant underdensity of low-redshift radio sources around Zwicky clusters, for which an environmental interpretation seems to be most reasonable. Our result for the overdensity of $z\sim 1$ sources is in good agreement with previous results and can possibly be interpreted as a lensing effect, though we have not tried to quantitatively investigate a lensing model. Other interpretations, such as patchy dust obscuration, can not explain the observed effect and its tendency with redshift.