The radio halo in the merging cluster A3562

¹ Istituto di Radioastronomia, CNR, via Gobetti 101, 40129, Bologna, Italy
² Osservatorio Astronomico, via Ranzani 1, 40126 Bologna, Italy
³ Dipartimento di Astronomia, Università di Bologna, via Ranzani 1, 40126, Bologna, Italy
⁴ School of Physics, University of Sydney, NSW2006, Australia
⁵ NFRA, Postbus 2, A7990 Dwingeloo, The Netherlands

Corresponding author: T. Venturi, tventuri@ira.cnr.it

Received: 3 December 2002
Accepted: 4 February 2003

Abstract

We present new VLA observations at 1.4 GHz confirming the presence of a radio halo at the centre of the cluster A3562, in the core of the Shapley Concentration. We also report a detailed multifrequency radio study of the head tail galaxy J1333–3141, which is completely embedded in the halo emission. The radio halo has an irregular shape, and a maximum linear size of ~620 kpc, which is among the smallest found in the literature. The source has a steep spectrum, i.e. , and its total radio power,  W Hz^-1, is the lowest known to date. The radio power of the halo and the X–ray parameters of the cluster, such as L_X and kT, nicely fit the correlations found in the literature for the other halo clusters, extending them to low radio powers. We found that the total number of electrons injected in the cluster environment by the head–tail source is enough to feed the halo, if we assume that the galaxy has been radio active over a large fraction of its crossing time. We discuss possible origins of the radio halo in the light of the two–phase model (Brunetti et al. 2001) and propose that the observed scenario is the result of a young source at the beginning of the reacceleration phase.