Friday 7 April 2:30pm

Katherine Blundell - Oxford

"Radio galaxy evolution: what you can learn from a Brief Encounter"

ABSTRACT: "I will discuss astrophysical explanations for the trends and interdependencies found between radio-source observables from a set of complete samples of radio sources selected at successively fainter flux limits. The use of this dataset decouples the effects of the tight correlation, inherent in any single flux-limited sample, between redshift and luminosity which have hitherto hindered interpretation of the relationships between different source properties. These relationships require refinements to our understanding of how radio galaxies work and I will present the first model for the evolution of radio sources which incorporates the crucial role played by their hotspots. I will describe the use of this model, while concurrently accounting for the sampling of the radio source population by our survey flux-limits and light-cone. Taken together these provide constraints the birth function (triggering rate) and evolution of the radio source population with cosmic time."