LOFAR and APERTIF Surveys of the Radio Sky : Probing Shocks and Magnetic Fields in Galaxy Clusters
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Author
Rottgering, Huub
Afonso, Jose
Barthel, Peter
Batejat, Fabien
Best, Philip
Bonafede, Annalisa
Brueggen, Marcus
Brunetti, Gianfranco
Chyzy, Krzysztof
Conway, John
De Gasperin, Francesco
Ferrari, Chiara
Haverkorn, Marijke
Heald, George
Hoeft, Matthias
Jackson, Neal
Jarvis, M.J.
Ker, Louise
Lehnert, Matt
Macario, Giulia
McKean, John
Miley, George
Morganti, Raffaella
Oosterloo, Tom
Orru, Emanuela
Pizzo, Roberto
Rafferty, David
Shulevski, Alexander
Tasse, Cyril
van Bemmel, Ilse
van der Tol, Bas
van Weeren, Reinout
Verheijen, Marc
White, Glenn
Wise, Michael
Attention
2299/7899
Abstract
At very low frequencies, the new pan-European radio telescope LOFAR is opening the last unexplored window of the electromagnetic spectrum for astrophysical studies. The revolutionary APERTIF-phased arrays that are about to be installed on the Westerbork radio telescope (WSRT) will dramatically increase the survey speed for the WSRT. Combined surveys with these two facilities will deeply chart the northern sky over almost two decades in radio frequency from similar to 15 up to 1400 MHz. Here we briefly describe some of the capabilities of these new facilities and what radio surveys are planned to study fun-damental issues related to the formation and evolution of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. In the second part we briefly review some recent observational results directly showing that diffuse radio emission in clusters traces shocks due to cluster mergers. As these diffuse radio sources are relatively bright at low frequencies, LOFAR should be able to detect thousands of such sources up to the epoch of cluster formation. This will allow addressing many question about the origin and evolution of shocks and magnetic fields in clusters. At the end we briefly review some of the first and very preliminary LOFAR results on clusters.