Radio and millimeter continuum surveys and their astrophysical implications

De Zotti, Gianfranco, Massardi, Marcella, Negrello, Mattia ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7925-7663 and Wall, Jasper 2009. Radio and millimeter continuum surveys and their astrophysical implications. The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review 18 (1-2) , pp. 1-65. 10.1007/s00159-009-0026-0

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Abstract

We review the statistical properties of the main populations of radio sources, as emerging from radio and millimeter sky surveys. Recent determinations of local luminosity functions are presented and compared with earlier estimates still in widespread use. A number of unresolved issues are discussed. These include: the (possibly luminosity-dependent) decline of source space densities at high redshifts; the possible dichotomies between evolutionary properties of low- versus high-luminosity and of flat- versus steep-spectrum AGN-powered radio sources; and the nature of sources accounting for the upturn of source counts at sub-milli-Jansky (mJy) levels. It is shown that straightforward extrapolations of evolutionary models, accounting for both the far-IR counts and redshift distributions of star-forming galaxies, match the radio source counts at flux-density levels of tens of μJy remarkably well. We consider the statistical properties of rare but physically very interesting classes of sources, such as GHz Peak Spectrum and ADAF/ADIOS sources, and radio afterglows of γ-ray bursts. We also discuss the exploitation of large-area radio surveys to investigate large-scale structure through studies of clustering and the Integrated Sachs–Wolfe effect. Finally, we briefly describe the potential of the new and forthcoming generations of radio telescopes. A compendium of source counts at different frequencies is given in Supplementary Material.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
Schools:	Physics and Astronomy
Subjects:	Q Science > QC Physics
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Radio continuum: galaxies; Galaxies: active; Galaxies: starburst; Galaxies: statistics; Quasars: general
Publisher:	Springer-Verlag
ISSN:	09354956
Last Modified:	31 Oct 2022 10:11
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/83975

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