The phase-space of tailed radio galaxies in massive clusters

¹ Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, PO Box 9513 NL-2333CA Leiden, The Netherlands
² Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto, 50 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3H4, Canada
³ Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada
⁴ Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics, University of Waterloo, 200 University Ave W, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada
⁵ INAF – Istituto di Radioastronomia, Via P. Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy
⁶ INAF – Astronomical Observatory of Padova, Vicolo dell’Osservatorio 5, IT-35122 Padova, Italy

^⋆ Corresponding author: svdjagt@hotmail.com

Received: 21 June 2024
Accepted: 26 April 2025

Abstract

The radio jets of radio galaxies in galaxy clusters are often bent due to the ram pressure of the intracluster medium. Most studies of bent radio tails initially identified tailed sources and then attempted to characterise their environments. In this paper we take an alternative approach, by starting with a well-defined sample of galaxy clusters and subsequently identifying tailed radio sources in these known environments. Our sample consists of 81 galaxy clusters from the Planck ESZ cluster sample. We present a catalogue of 127 extended cluster radio sources, including brightest cluster galaxies, obtained by visually inspecting Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (1–2 GHz) observations. We have determined the bending angle of 109 well-structured sources, and classified them accordingly: 84 narrow-angle tailed sources (NATs), 16 wide-angle tailed sources (WATs), and 9 non-bent radio sources (i.e. with bending angles of less than 15°). We find a negative correlation between the bending angle and the distance to the cluster centre (impact radius), and we observe that NATs generally have smaller impact radii than the regular galaxy population and WATs. We present a phase-space diagram of tailed radio galaxy velocities and impact radii and find that NATs have a significant excess in the high-velocity and low-impact radius region of phase space, indicating they undergo the largest amount of ram pressure bending. We compared the results from our sample with those for jellyfish galaxies, and suggest that the mechanism responsible for bending the radio tails is similar to the stripping of gas in jellyfish galaxies, although tailed radio galaxies are more concentrated in the centre of the phase space. Finally, we find that NATs and WATs have the same occurrence ratio in merging and relaxed clusters. However, their distribution in the phase-space is significantly different. We report an excess of NATs in the high-velocity and low-impact-radius phase-space region in merging clusters, and an excess of NATs in relaxed clusters in the low-velocity and low-impact-radius region.