arXiv subjects

Chiranjib Konar

Publications and source records attributed to Chiranjib Konar.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Exploring the Influence of the Jet-environment Interactions on the Observed Asymmetry of Extragalactic Radio Sources with SKAO

Several observational and theoretical studies have suggested that the observed arm-length asymmetries in extragalactic radio sources are primarily driven by interactions between radio jets and an inhomogeneous ambient medium, although orientation effects may also contribute to the observed asymmetry. However, the observational evidence supporting these interpretations comes from only a small sample of FR II radio sources, in which the brighter hotspots are typically found on the side of the shorter jet arm. We aim to investigate the interactions between powerful jets and their surrounding environments in radio sources, with a particular focus on how these interactions shape the morphology and asymmetry of the radio lobes. The unprecedented sensitivity and angular resolution of the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) will facilitate the discovery and detailed characterization of asymmetric radio sources across a wide range of physical scales and redshifts. Using a combination of 3D magnetohydrodynamic simulations and observational data from the SKAO, one can explore the influence of clumpy interstellar and intergalactic media on jet propagation and the resulting asymmetries in radio sources at various redshifts. The study will analyze how environmental factors, such as density and turbulence, decelerate jets, leading to observable asymmetries in smaller, higher-redshift sources. In this chapter, we review existing simulation and observational results on jet-environment interactions in radio galaxies and discuss how SKAO capabilities will further advance our understanding of AGN feedback and its role in shaping large-scale cosmic structure.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2026

Tracing gas outflows in molecular gas-rich galaxies with the SKA

Active galactic nuclei with powerful radio jets play a key role in galaxy evolution through their ability to regulate the cold gas reservoirs that fuel star formation. Jet-driven feedback can heat, compress, or expel atomic and molecular gas, thereby reshaping the interstellar medium and altering star formation efficiency. However, the physical coupling between AGN activity and the multi-phase interstellar medium remains poorly constrained, particularly in radio-loud systems where mechanical feedback and multiphase outflows are expected to dominate. SKA will provide major advances in the study of cold gas in AGN host galaxies through sensitive observations of H~{\sc i} emission and absorption, together with access to selected low-frequency molecular transitions within the SKA~1 frequency range, including OH, H$_2$CO, CH$_3$OH, and, at high redshift, low-$J$ transitions of CO, HCN, and HCO$^{+}$ in rare bright systems. Combined with radio continuum measurements, these tracers will provide direct constraints on gas mass, kinematics, turbulence, and inflow/outflow signatures, enabling detailed studies of feedback-regulated cold gas reservoirs in AGN environments. In this chapter, we examine how SKA1 observations of neutral hydrogen, complemented by molecular-line and radio continuum studies, can be used to quantify multiphase gas flows and feedback energetics in molecular-gas-rich radio galaxies. SKA surveys will enable population-level studies of AGN-driven feedback, providing a new framework for understanding how radio jets regulate the cold interstellar medium and star formation across cosmic time.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

RAD@home citizen science discovery of an AGN spewing a large unipolar radio bubble onto its merging companion galaxy

AGN feedback during galaxy merger has been the most favoured model to explain black hole-galaxy co-evolution. However, how the AGN-driven jet/wind/radiation is coupled with the gas of the merging galaxies, which leads to positive feedback, momentarily enhanced star formation, and subsequently negative feedback, a decline in star formation, is poorly understood. Only a few cases are known where the jet and companion galaxy interaction leads to minor off-axis distortions in the jets and enhanced star formation in the gas-rich minor companions. Here, we briefly report one extraordinary case, RAD12, discovered by RAD@home citizen science collaboratory, where for the first time a radio jet-driven bubble ~137 kpc is showing a symmetric reflection after hitting the incoming galaxy which is not a gas-rich minor but a gas-poor early-type galaxy in a major merger. Surprisingly, neither positive feedback nor any radio lobe on the counter jet side, if any, is detected. It is puzzling if RAD12 is a genuine one-sided jet or a case of radio lobe trapped, compressed and re-accelerated by shocks during the merger. This is the first imaging study of RAD12 presenting follow-up with the GMRT, archival MeerKAT radio data and CFHT optical data.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2021

The Sharpest Ultraviolet view of the star formation in an extreme environment of the nearest Jellyfish Galaxy IC 3418

We present the far ultraviolet (FUV) imaging of the nearest Jellyfish or Fireball galaxy IC3418/VCC 1217, in the Virgo cluster of galaxies, using Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) onboard the ASTROSAT satellite. The young star formation observed here in the 17 kpc long turbulent wake of IC3418, due to ram pressure stripping of cold gas surrounded by hot intra-cluster medium, is a unique laboratory that is unavailable in the Milkyway. We have tried to resolve star forming clumps, seen compact to GALEX UV images, using better resolution available with the UVIT and incorporated UV-optical images from Hubble Space Telescope archive. For the first time, we resolve the compact star forming clumps (fireballs) into sub-clumps and subsequently into a possibly dozen isolated stars. We speculate that many of them could be blue supergiant stars which are cousins of SDSS J122952.66+112227.8, the farthest star (~17 Mpc) we had found earlier surrounding one of these compact clumps. We found evidence of star formation rate (4 - 7.4 x 10^-4 M_sun per yr ) in these fireballs, estimated from UVIT flux densities, to be increasing with the distance from the parent galaxy. We propose a new dynamical model in which the stripped gas may be developing vortex street where the vortices grow to compact star forming clumps due to self-gravity. Gravity winning over turbulent force with time or length along the trail can explain the puzzling trend of higher star formation rate and bluer/younger stars observed in fireballs farther away from the parent galaxy.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2018

Rare finding of a 100 kpc large double-lobed radio galaxy hosted in the Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxy SDSS J103024.95+551622.7

Among the large varieties of active galactic nuclei (AGN) known, narrow line Seyfert 1 (NLSy1) galaxies are a puzzling class, particularly after the discovery of $γ$-ray emission in a handful of them using observations from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Here, we report the discovery of a rare large double lobed radio source with its radio core associated with a NLSy1 galaxy SDSS J103024.95+551622.7 at z = 0.435. The lobe separation is 116 kpc which is the second largest known projected size among NLSy1 radio sources. This finding is based on the analysis of 1.4 GHz data from the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-centimeters (FIRST) archives. Along with the core and edge-brightened lobes we detected significant (30%) fraction of clear diffuse emission showing typical back-flow from FR II radio galaxy lobes. For the source, we estimated a jet power of $3 \times 10^{44}$ erg s$^{-1}$ suggesting that its jet power is similar to that of classical radio galaxies. Emission from the source is also found to be non-variable both in the optical and mid-infrared bands. Identification of more such sources may help to reveal new modes of AGN and understand their role in black hole galaxy evolution.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2016

Tracking galaxy evolution through low frequency radio continuum observations using SKA and Citizen-science Research using Multi-wavelength data

We present a review on galaxy black hole co-evolution through merger, star formation and AGN-jet feedback. We highlight results on transitional galaxies (e.g. NGC1482, NGC6764, NGC3801, Speca, RAD-18 etc.) which has data from Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT) and other sub-mm, IR, optical, UV and X-ray telescopes. The `smoking gun' relic-evidences of past AGN-jet feedback which is believed to have quenched star formation in transitional galaxies are still missing. Relic radio lobes, as old as a few hundred Myr, can be best detected at low radio frequencies with the GMRT, LOFAR and in future SKA. However, similar relic evidences of quasar activities, known as `Hanny's Voorwerp' discovered by Galaxy Zoo in optical data, are only around a few tens of thousand years old. More discoveries are needed to match these time-scales with time since the decline of star formation in transitional galaxies. Such faint fuzzy relic emissions in optical and angular-scale sensitive radio interferometric images can be discovered most efficiently by citizen-scientists but with a formal training. We describe RAD@home, the only Indian citizen-science research project in astronomy which takes such a modified approach. We present interesting objects, discovered from the TIFR GMRT Sky Survey (TGSS) by 69 trained citizen-scientists or e-astronomers, like relic radio lobes, episodic radio galaxies, jet-galaxy interaction, bent radio galaxy in filament etc.. This model can provide an equal opportunity of academic-growth to people even in the under-developed regions where we always need to establish our optical and radio telescopes. This can expand the research-activity of city-based research-institutes beyond their four brick walls, and alleviate various socio-economic and geo-political constraints on growth of citizens located in remote areas. #RADatHomeIndia #ABCDresearch

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2014

New results on the exotic galaxy `Speca' and discovering many more Specas with RAD@home network

We present the first report on an innovative new project named "RAD@home", a citizen-science research collaboratory built on free web-services like Facebook, Google, Skype, NASA Skyview, NED, TGSS etc.. This is the first of its kind in India, a zero-funded, zero-infrastructure, human-resource network to educate and directly involve in research, hundreds of science-educated under-graduate population of India, irrespective of their official employment and home-location with in the country. Professional international collaborators are involved in follow up observation and publication of the objects discovered by the collaboratory. We present here ten newly found candidate episodic radio galaxies, already proposed to GMRT, and ten more interesting cases which includes, bent-lobe radio galaxies located in new Mpc-scale filaments, likely tracing cosmological cluster accretion from the cosmic web. Two new Speca-like rare spiral-host large radio galaxies have also been been reported here. Early analyses from our follow up observations with the Subaru and XMM-Newton telescopes have revealed that Speca is likely a new entry to the cluster and is a fast rotating, extremely massive, star forming disk galaxy. Speca-like massive galaxies with giant radio lobes, are possibly remnants of luminous quasars in the early Universe or of first supermassive black holes with in first masssve galaxies. As discoveries of Speca-like galaxies did not require new data from big telescopes, but free archival radio-optical data, these early results demonstrate the discovery potential of RAD@home and how it can help resource-rich professionals, as well as demonstrate a model of academic-growth for resource-poor people in the underdeveloped regions via Internet.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2009

A giant radio jet of very unusual polarization in a single-lobed radio galaxy

We report the discovery of a very unusual, predominantly one-sided radio galaxy CGCG049-033. Its radio jet, the largest detected so far, emits strongly polarized synchrotron radiation and can be traced all the way from the galactic nucleus to the hot spot located ~440 kpc away. This jet emanates from an extremely massive black-hole (mass > 10^9 times solar mass) and forms a strikingly compact radio lobe. To a surface brightness contrast of at least 20 no radio lobe is detected on the side of the counter-jet, which is similar to the main jet in brightness upto the scale of tens of kpc. Thus, contrary to the nearly universal trend, the brightness asymmetry in this radio galaxy increases with distance from the nucleus. With several unusual properties, including a predominantly toroidal magnetic field, this Fanaroff-Riley type II (FR-II) mega-jet is an exceptionally useful laboratory for testing the role of magnetic field in jet stabilization and radio lobe formation.

astro-ph.CO↗