The GLEAMing of the first supermassive black holes: II. A new sample of high-redshift radio galaxy candidates

Broderick, J. W.; Drouart, G.; Seymour, N.; Galvin, T. J.; Wright, N.; Carnero Rosell, A.; Chhetri, R.; Dannerbauer, H.; Driver, S. P.; Morgan, J. S.; Moss, V. A.; Prabu, S.; Afonso, J. M.; De Breuck, C.; Emonts, B. H. C.; Franzen, T. M. O.; Gutiérrez, C. M.; Hancock, P. J.; Heald, G. H.; Hurley-Walker, N.; Ivison, R. J.; Lehnert, M. D.; Noirot, G.; Read, M.; Shabala, S. S.; Stern, D.; Sutherland, W. J.; Sutorius, E.; Turner, R. J.; Vernet, J.
Bibliographical reference

Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia

Advertised on:
11
2022
Number of authors
30
IAC number of authors
3
Citations
11
Refereed citations
9
Description
While unobscured and radio-quiet active galactic nuclei are regularly being found at redshifts $z > 6$ , their obscured and radio-loud counterparts remain elusive. We build upon our successful pilot study, presenting a new sample of low-frequency-selected candidate high-redshift radio galaxies (HzRGs) over a sky area 20 times larger. We have refined our selection technique, in which we select sources with curved radio spectra between 72-231 MHz from the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky Murchison Widefield Array (GLEAM) survey. In combination with the requirements that our GLEAM-selected HzRG candidates have compact radio morphologies and be undetected in near-infrared $K_s$ -band imaging from the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy Kilo-degree Infrared Galaxy (VIKING) survey, we find 51 new candidate HzRGs over a sky area of approximately $1200 deg^2$ . Our sample also includes two sources from the pilot study: the second-most distant radio galaxy currently known, at $z=5.55$ , with another source potentially at $z ∼ 8$ . We present our refined selection technique and analyse the properties of the sample. We model the broadband radio spectra between 74 MHz and 9 GHz by supplementing the GLEAM data with both publicly available data and new observations from the Australia Telescope Compact Array at 5.5 and 9 GHz. In addition, deep $K_s$ -band imaging from the High-Acuity Widefield K-band Imager (HAWK-I) on the Very Large Telescope and from the Southern Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey Regions $K_s$ -band Survey (SHARKS) is presented for five sources. We discuss the prospects of finding very distant radio galaxies in our sample, potentially within the epoch of reionisation at $z \gtrsim 6.5$.
Related projects
Galaxy proto-cluster
Molecular Gas and Dust in Galaxies Across Cosmic Time
Two of the most fundamental questions in astrophysics are the conversion of molecular gas into stars and how this physical process is a function of environments on all scales, ranging from planetary systems, stellar clusters, galaxies to galaxy clusters. The main goal of this internal project is to get insight into the formation and evolution of
Helmut
Dannerbauer