Abstract The relative positions of the high and low surface brightness regions of radio-loud active galaxies in the 3CR sample were found by Fanaroff and Riley to be correlated with their luminosity. We revisit this canonical relationship with a sample of 5805 extended radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGN) from the LOFAR Two-Metre Sky Survey (LoTSS), compiling the most complete data set of radio-galaxy morphological information obtained to date. We demonstrate that, for this sample, radio luminosity does not reliably predict whether a source is edge-brightened (FRII) or centre-brightened (FRI). We highlight a large population of low-luminosity FRIIs, extending three orders of magnitude below the traditional FR break, and demonstrate that their host galaxies are on average systematically fainter than those of high-luminosity FRIIs and of FRIs matched in luminosity. This result supports the jet power/environment paradigm for the FR break: low-power jets may remain undisrupted and form hotspots in lower mass hosts. We also find substantial populations that appear physically distinct from the traditional FR classes, including candidate restarting sources and ‘hybrids’. We identify 459 bent-tailed sources, which we find to have a significantly higher SDSS cluster association fraction (at z < 0.4) than the general radio-galaxy population, similar to the results of previous work. The complexity of the LoTSS faint, extended radio sources not only demonstrates the need for caution in the automated classification and interpretation of extended sources in modern radio surveys, but also reveals the wealth of morphological information such surveys will provide and its value for advancing our physical understanding of radio-loud AGN.

We report the first large, systematic study of the dynamics and energetics of a representative sample of FRII radio galaxies with well-characterized group/cluster environments. We used X-ray inverse-Compton and radio synchrotron measurements to determine the internal radio-lobe conditions, and these were compared with external pressures acting on the lobes, determined from measurements of the thermal X-ray emission of the group/cluster. Consistent with previous work, we found that FRII radio lobes are typically electron-dominated by a small factor relative to equipartition, and are over-pressured relative to the external medium in their outer parts. These results suggest that there is typically no energetically significant proton population in the lobes of FRII radio galaxies (unlike for FRIs), and so for this population, inverse-Compton modelling provides an accurate way of measuring total energy content and estimating jet power. We estimated the distribution of Mach numbers for the population of expanding radio lobes, finding that at least half of the radio galaxies are currently driving strong shocks into their group/cluster environments. Finally, we determined a jet power-radio luminosity relation for FRII radio galaxies based on our estimates of lobe internal energy and Mach number. The slope and normalisation of this relation are consistent with theoretical expectations, given the departure from equipartition and environmental distribution for our sample.

The interactions between radio-loud AGN and their environments play an important rôle in galaxy and cluster evolution. Recent work has demonstrated fundamental differences between High and Low Excitation Radio Galaxies (HERGs and LERGs), and shown that they may have different relationships with their environments. In the Chandra Large Project ERA (Environments of Radio-loud AGN), we made the first systematic X-ray environmental study of the cluster environments of radio galaxies at a single epoch (z ∼ 0.5), and found tentative evidence for a correlation between radio luminosity and cluster X-ray luminosity. We also found that this relationship appeared to be driven by the LERG sub-population (Ineson et al. 2013).We have now repeated the analysis with a low redshift sample (z ∼ 0.1), and found strong correlations between radio luminosity and environment richness and between radio luminosity and central density for the LERGs but not for the HERGs. These results are consistent with models in which the HERGs are fuelled from accretion discs maintained from local reservoirs of gas, while LERGs are fuelled more directly by gas ingested from the intra-cluster medium.Comparing the samples, we found that although the maximum environment richness of the HERG environments is similar in both samples, there are poorer HERG environments in the z ∼ 0.1 sample than in the z ∼ 0.5 sample. We have therefore tentative evidence of evolution of the HERG environments. We found no differences between the LERG subsamples for the two epochs, as would be expected if radio and cluster luminosity are related.

Ongoing and future radio surveys aim to trace the evolution of black hole growth and feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) throughout cosmic time; however, there remain major uncertainties in translating radio luminosity functions into a reliable assessment of the energy input as a function of galaxy and/or dark matter halo mass. A crucial and long-standing problem is the composition of the radio-lobe plasma that traces AGN jet activity. In this paper, we carry out a systematic comparison of the plasma conditions in Fanaroff & Riley class I and II radio galaxies to demonstrate conclusively that their internal composition is systematically different. This difference is best explained by the presence of an energetically dominant proton population in the FRI, but not the FRII radio galaxies. We show that, as expected from this systematic difference in particle content, radio morphology also affects the jet-power/radioluminosity relationship, with FRII radio galaxies having a significantly lower ratio of jet power to radio luminosity than the FRI cluster radio sources used to derive jet-power scaling relations via X-ray cavity measurements. Finally we also demonstrate conclusively that lobe composition is unconnected to accretion mode (optical excitation class): the internal conditions of low-and high-excitation FRII radio lobes are indistinguishable. We conclude that inferences of population-wide AGN impact require careful assessment of the contribution of different jet sub-classes, particularly given the increased diversity of jet evolutionary states expected to be present in deep, low-frequency radio surveys such as the LOFAR Two-Metre Sky Survey.

Due to their steep spectra, low-frequency observations of Fanaroff-Riley type II (FR II) radio galaxies potentially provide key insights in to the morphology, energetics and spectrum of these powerful radio sources. However, limitations imposed by the previous generation of radio interferometers at metre wavelengths have meant that this region of parameter space remains largely unexplored. In this paper, the first in a series examining FR IIs at low frequencies, we use LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) observations between 50 and 160 MHz, along with complementary archival radio and X-ray data, to explore the properties of two FR II sources, 3C 452 and 3C 223. We find that the morphology of 3C 452 is that of a standard FR II rather than of a double-double radio galaxy as had previously been suggested, with no remnant emission being observed beyond the active lobes. We find that the low-frequency integrated spectra of both sources are much steeper than expected based on traditional assumptions and, using synchrotron/inverse-Compton model fitting, show that the total energy content of the lobes is greater than previous estimates by a factor of around 5 for 3C 452 and 2 for 3C 223. We go on to discuss possible causes of these steeper-than-expected spectra and provide revised estimates of the internal pressures and magnetic field strengths for the intrinsically steep case. We find that the ratio between the equipartition magnetic field strengths and those derived through synchrotron/inverse-Compton model fitting remains consistent with previous findings and show that the observed departure from equipartition may in some cases provide a solution to the spectral versus dynamical age disparity.