Low-level radio emission from radio galaxies and implications for the large scale structure

Abstract

We present an update on our proposal that during the 'quasar era' (1:5 ≲ z ≲ 3), powerful radio galaxies could have played a major role in the enhanced global star-formation, and in the widespread magnetization and metal pollution of the universe. A key ingredient of this proposal is our estimate that the true cosmological evolution of the radio galaxy population is likely to be even steeper than what has been inferred from flux-limited samples of radio sources with redshift data, when an allowance is made for the inverse Compton losses on the cosmic microwave background which were much greater at higher redshifts. We thus estimate that a large fraction of the clumps of proto-galactic material within the cosmic web of laments was probably impacted by the expanding lobes of radio galaxies during the quasar era. Some recently published observational evidence and simulations which provide support for this picture are pointed out. We also show that the inverse Compton x-ray emission from the population of radio galaxies during the quasar era, which we inferred to be largely missing from the derived radio luminosity function, is still only a small fraction of the observed soft x-ray background (XRB) and hence the limit imposed on this scenario by the XRB is not violated.