Speaker
Description
The MeerKAT Exploration of Relics, Giant Halos and Extragalactic Radio Sources (MERGHERS) survey was designed to investigate diffuse radio emission associated with merger activity in massive galaxy clusters. The pilot survey comprised a 16-hour observation of 13 massive clusters and revealed strong evidence of ongoing or recent mergers in several systems. This was followed by the Tier 1 survey, targeting 25 massive clusters in the redshift range 0.4 ≲ z ≲ 0.57. Merger-driven processes in these environments give rise to diffuse synchrotron emission in the intracluster medium (ICM), observed as radio relics, giant radio halos, minihalos, and revived fossil plasma, each associated with physical formation scenarios. To investigate the origin and evolution of this non-thermal emission, we analyse a subset of eight galaxy clusters selected from the MERGHERS Tier 1 sample, with the redshift range 0.41 ≲ z ≲ 0.56. These clusters were observed with the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in Band 4 (550–900 MHz), with complementary MeerKAT L-band (1.28 GHz) data available for a multi-frequency comparison. The primary aim is to characterise the spectral properties of the diffuse radio emission in order to probe the underlying relativistic electron populations and to test and constrain current particle acceleration and re-acceleration models. We present a detailed spectral and morphological analysis of two of the merging galaxy clusters from the sample, highlighting their features and discussing the implications for non-thermal processes in the intracluster medium.
| Stream | Science or Engineering |
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