Radio jets: properties, life and impact

Radio jets: properties, life and impact

Raffaella Morganti (ASTRON/Kapteyn Institute Groningen)

Radio jets are one spectacular manifestation of the nuclear activity in galaxies. Our knowledge about the properties of radio jets and their impact has further expanded in the last years. This has been possible thanks to the data from new or upgraded radio telescopes. In this talk, I will review the current status of the field and describe some of the exciting recent results and the surprises they have brought. In particular, I will discuss the physical properties of the radio jets as function of their radio power. I will then describe the steps forward we have made in the understanding the life-cycle of radio source. The presence of a cycle of activity ensures a recurrent impact of the radio jets on their environment. The evolutionary stage of the radio AGN  can be derived from their radio spectra and morphology. The possibilities offered by the new generation of low-frequency radio telescopes will be described.  I will dedicate the last part of the talk in describing recent results showing the actual impact of jets on the surrounding galactic, circum-galactic and cluster medium.
In particular, I will describe the predictions made by numerical simulations about the impact of a newly born radio jet and some of the results found by tracing the cold component of the  gas (HI and molecular).