# Radio Sources in the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. I. Radio source populations11footnote 1Based on data obtained by the 2dFGRS Team: J Bland–Hawthorn (AAO), R D Cannon (AAO), S Cole (Durham), M Colless (ANU, Australian convenor), C A Collins (Liverpool J Moores), W J Couch (UNSW), N Cross (St Andrews), G B Dalton (Oxford), K E Deeley (UNSW/AAO), R De Propris (UNSW), S P Driver (St Andrews), G Efstathiou (Cambridge), R S Ellis (Cambridge, UK convenor), S Folkes (Cambridge), C S Frenk (Durham), K Glazebrook (AAO), N J Kaiser (Hawaii), O Lahav (Cambridge), I J Lewis (AAO), S L Lumsden (Leeds), S J Maddox (Cambridge), S Moody (Cambridge), P Norberg (Durham), J A Peacock (Edinburgh), B A Peterson (ANU), I A Price (ANU), S Ronen (Cambridge), M Seabourne (Oxford), R Smith (Edinburgh), W J Sutherland (Oxford), H Tadros (Oxford), K Taylor (AAO).

## 1 Introduction

A new generation of sensitive, large–area radio–source surveys at milliJanksy levels (1 Jy = 10<sup>-26</sup> W m<sup>-2</sup>Hz<sup>-1</sup>) is now becoming available. They include the FIRST survey (Becker et al. 1995), WENSS (Rengelink et al. 1997), NVSS (Condon et al. 1998) and SUMSS (Bock et al. 1999). These surveys offer some important advantages for cosmological studies – they reach sufficiently high source densities that detection of large–scale structure is possible (Cress et al. 1996, Magliocchetti et al. 1998), and also probe a second cosmologically–significant radio source population, that of star–forming galaxies, which are rarely seen in strong–source surveys.

Deep radio surveys of a few small areas of sky at 1.4 GHz (Condon 1984, Windhorst et al. 1985; see also Condon 1992) have shown that there are two distinct populations of extragalactic radio sources. Over 95% of radio sources above about 50 mJy are classical radio galaxies and quasars (median redshift z$``$1) powered by active galactic nuclei (AGN), while the remainder are identified with star–forming galaxies (median z$``$0.1). The fraction of star–forming galaxies increases rapidly below 10 mJy, and below 1 mJy they begin to be the dominant population.

The scientific return from radio continuum surveys is enormously increased if the optical counterparts of the radio sources can be identified and their redshift distribution measured. In the past, this has been a slow and tedious process which could only be carried out for relatively small samples. However, the Anglo–Australian Observatory’s Two–degree Field (2dF) spectrograph now makes it possible to carry out spectroscopy of several hundred galaxies simultaneously. Here, we describe the first step in this process – the identification of faint radio–source counterparts among galaxies whose spectra have been obtained in the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS).

The 2dFGRS (Colless 1999, Maddox 1998) is a large–scale survey of 250,000 galaxies covering 2000 square degrees in the southern hemisphere. The survey is designed to be almost complete down to a limiting apparent magnitude of $`b_\mathrm{J}=19.4`$. The median redshift of the galaxies is about 0.1 and the great majority have $`z<0.3`$. Spectra are being obtained using the 2dF multi–object fibre optic spectroscopic system on the 3.9m Anglo–Australian Telescope (AAT) (Lewis et al. 1998; Smith & Lankshear 1998). 2dF enables the AAT to obtain spectra for 400 objects simultaneously, spread over a field which is two degrees in diameter. The survey will cover two large strips of sky at high Galactic latitude, one each in the southern and northern Galactic hemispheres, plus outlying random fields in the south. The first test data were obtained in 1997 and the survey is expected to be substantially complete by the end of 2000.

This paper presents the first results from what will eventually be a much larger study. When the 2dFGRS is complete, it will yield around 4000 good–quality spectra of galaxies associated with faint radio sources — by far the largest sample of radio–galaxy spectra ever compiled. Our aim in this paper is to present a first, qualitative exploration of the faint radio source population as observed by 2dF and the NVSS.

Throughout this paper, we use H<sub>o</sub>=75 km/s/Mpc and q<sub>o</sub>=0.5.

## 2 The optical data

Our data set comprises the thirty fields observed by the 2dFGRS team in November 1997 and January 1998. Twenty–three of these are in the southern Galactic hemisphere and the other seven in the north. They include a total of 8362 target galaxies brighter than $`b_\mathrm{J}`$ magnitude 19.4.

Although each 2dF field covers about 3.14 square degrees, the total effective area covered by the 30 fields is somewhat less than 90 square degrees because there is some overlap between adjacent fields. Also, the fractional completeness of this early sample varies substantially from field to field. In many fields about 30% of the fibres were allocated to targets in a parallel QSO survey; the 2dFGRS uses a flexible tiling algorithm to deal with this and with the intrinsic variations in target density across the sky. When complete, the GRS will yield spectra for around 95% of all galaxies in the input catalogue. The current sample has variable levels of completeness (in terms of the surface distribution of all galaxies brighter than $`b_\mathrm{J}=19.4`$ mag.), though there should be no systematic effects depending on the magnitude, redshift or other properties of the galaxies.

The standard observing pattern for the 2dFGRS is a set of three consecutive 20–minute exposures per field, together with calibration arcs and flat fields. The total exposure time is well–matched to the time required to reconfigure a second set of fibres for the next observation. Up to 380 galaxies can be observed simultaneously, with some 20 fibres allocated to sky. In many fields, however, the total number of galaxies is closer to 250 since a deep QSO survey is being carried out in parallel with the galaxy redshift survey.

Using 300 lines/mm gratings, the 2dFGRS spectra cover the wavelength range 3800Å to 8000Å at a resolution of about 10Å. Most spectra have a signal–to–noise ratio (S/N) of 10 (per 4Å pixel) or better. Reliable redshifts are obtained for up to 95% of the targets in good observing conditions; the survey average is currently about 90% (Folkes et al. 1999). About 5% of the targets are found to be foreground stars; the original selection was for objects which appeared non–stellar in digitised data from UK Schmidt Telescope sky survey photographs, using a conservative criterion to minimise the number of galaxies missed.

Figure 1 shows three spectra from the survey, and gives an idea of the typical quality of 2dFGRS spectra for galaxies with redshifts around $`z=0.15`$ and $`b_\mathrm{J}`$ magnitudes in the range 17.6–18.9.

## 3 The radio data

The NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS; Condon et al. 1998) is a 1.4 GHz (20 cm) radio imaging survey of the entire sky north of declination $`40^{}`$. The survey catalogue contains sources as weak as 2.5 mJy, and is essentially complete above 3.5 mJy.

We used the NVSS source catalogue to identify candidate radio–emitting galaxies in the 2dFGRS. Subsets of the NVSS catalogue were extracted to match the RA and Dec range covered by each of the 2dF fields. The NVSS source density is roughly 60 per square degree, so each of these sub-catalogues contained about 200 radio sources. At this stage, we did not attempt to identify ‘double’ NVSS sources. However, we estimate (using an algorithm similar to that adopted by Magliocchetti et al. (1998) for identifying double radio sources in the FIRST survey) that these represent only a small fraction of NVSS sources (of order $`1`$%), so the presence of double sources does not significantly affect our results in this small sample.

We compared the NVSS and 2dFGRS catalogues for each field and identified the galaxies for which there is a candidate radio ‘match’, i.e. an NVSS radio source lying within 15 arcsec of the position of a 2dF galaxy. The 15 arcsec limit was chosen because our earlier Monte Carlo tests using the COSMOS database suggested that most candidate matches of bright galaxies (i.e. $`b_\mathrm{J}<`$19.4 mag) with radio–optical separation up to 10 arcsec are real associations, together with a substantial fraction of those with offsets of 10–15 arcsec.

The uncertainty in the NVSS radio source positions increases from a 1$`\sigma `$ error of 1–2 arcsec at 10mJy to 4–5 arcsec (and occasionally up to 10 arcsec) for the faintest (2–3mJy) sources (Condon et al. 1998). In addition, centroiding of bright radio sources with extended radio structure can be somewhat uncertain and may make optical identification difficult. Determining the optical centroid also becomes imprecise for large nearby galaxies. In these cases, overlaying the radio contours on an optical image usually makes it clear whether or not the candidate ID is correct.

We found a total of 127 candidate matches in the 30 fields studied, i.e. 1.5% of the 8362 2dF galaxies in the survey area. Of these, 99 had radio–optical offsets of less than 10 arcsec.

We also ran the matching program twice more, offsetting all the radio positions by 3 and 5 arcmin. Any matches produced from this ‘off–source’ catalogue should be chance coincidences, allowing us to estimate the number of matches expected purely by chance. Table 1 lists the results of this test, and shows the distribution of the offset D (difference between radio and optical positions) for matches found in the ‘on–source’ and ‘off–source’ tests.

A further check comes from predicting the expected number of chance coincidences, based on the average surface densities of objects. Since 15 arcsec is 1/240 of the 1 degree radius of each 2dF field, and there are about 60 NVSS sources per square degree, the chance that a given GRS target will fall within 15 arcsec of an unrelated radio source is about 60$`\times \pi `$/240<sup>2</sup> (the resolution of the NVSS is such that at most one source can be identified with each optical galaxy). Thus about 27 chance coincidences are expected in a total of 8362 galaxies (see column 5 of Table 1). This calculation ignores the known clustering of galaxies on the sky, although this will only invalidate the result if there is significant clustering on scales comparable to the identification range of 15 arcsec, or if there are substantial differences between the spatial distribution of radio–loud and quiet galaxies. We believe these effects are unlikely to give an error of more than 10%.

The results suggest that candidate matches with an offset of up to 10 arcsec are highly likely to be real associations. We therefore use a simple 10 arcsec cutoff in radio–optical position difference for the analysis which follows. This gives us 99 radio–detected galaxy matches in the 30 2dF fields. It also means that we have probably omitted about a dozen real identifications with larger offsets, but this is not a problem here since our aim is to make a first qualitative exploration of the faint radio galaxy population.

## 4 Two kinds of radio source: AGN/SF classification

We classified each matched galaxy as either ‘AGN’ or ‘star–forming’ (SF) based on its 2dF spectrum. ‘AGN’ galaxies have either a pure absorption–line spectrum like that of a giant elliptical galaxy, or a stellar continuum plus nebular emission lines such as \[OII\] and \[OIII\] which are strong compared with any Balmer–line emission. Some of the emission–line AGN have spectra which resemble Seyfert galaxies. ‘SF’ galaxies are those where strong, narrow emission lines of H$`\alpha `$ and (usually) H$`\beta `$ dominate the spectrum. They include both nearby spirals and more distant IRAS galaxies. Figure 1 shows examples of spectra we classified as AGN, Seyfert and SF. Note that in this classification scheme, ‘AGN’ may simply denote the presence of radio emission, with no obvious optical signature. The origin of radio emission in the AGN and SF galaxies is believed to be quite different (e.g. Condon 1989), arising from non–thermal processes related to a central massive object in the AGN galaxies and from processes related to star formation (including supernova remnants, HII regions, etc.) in the SF galaxies.

We are confident that this simple ‘eyeball’ classification of the 2dF spectra allows us to separate the AGN and SF classes accurately. Jackson & Londish (1999) measured several emission–line ratios (including \[OIII, $`\lambda `$5007\]/H$`\beta `$, \[NII, $`\lambda `$6584\]/H$`\alpha `$, \[OI, $`\lambda `$6300\]/H$`\alpha `$ and \[SII, $`\lambda \lambda `$6716,6731\]/H$`\alpha `$) for most of the galaxies studied here and plotted them on the diagnostic diagrams of Veilleux & Osterbrock (1987). They found that the ‘eyeball’ classifications and line–ratio based classifications agreed more than 95% of the time, and hence that ‘eyeball’ classifications can be used with confidence to analyse large samples of 2dF spectra.

Most of the 2dF spectra are of impressively good quality. However, of the 98 spectra we examined (one galaxy was not actually observed by the 2dFGRS), nine had such a low signal–to–noise ratio that we were unable to classify the spectrum. One other object appeared to be a Galactic star. We were therefore left with 88 good–quality 2dF spectra of candidate radio matches with an offset D$`<`$10 arcsec. Of these 88 galaxies, 36 (41%) were classified as SF and 52 (59%) as AGN. One galaxy classified as SF had an emission–line spectrum which resembled an AGN, but was also detected as an IRAS source at 60 $`\mu `$m. This may be a genuinely composite object. Table 2 lists the matched galaxies, their spectral classification, 1.4 GHz radio continuum flux density, apparent magnitude and redshift. A more quantitative spectral classification using diagnostic emission–line ratios will be presented in the forthcoming paper by Jackson and Londish (1999).

Figures 2 and 3 show the distribution of AGN and SF classes in apparent magnitude and redshift respectively. There is a clear segregation in apparent magnitude: most galaxies brighter than about $`b_\mathrm{J}`$ = 16.5–17 magnitude fall into the star–forming (SF) class, while the AGN class dominates the population fainter than $`b_\mathrm{J}17`$. This reflects strong differences in the global properties of the two classes as well as the radio and optical flux limits of the NVSS and 2dFGRS. The AGN galaxies are typically more distant than the SF galaxies (by about a factor of 3: Figure 3), and more luminous both optically and in radio power (see Figures 4 and 5). We know that the SF galaxies continue to large redshifts and to very faint optical magnitudes (e.g. Benn et al. 1993), but these galaxies quickly drop out of our sample because of the 2–3 mJy limit of the NVSS in radio flux density. Similarly, we know that the AGN galaxies extend to much higher redshifts than probed by the 2dFGRS, but these distant AGN galaxies will be fainter than the $`b_\mathrm{J}=19.4`$ mag optical limit of the 2dFGRS. Figure 6 shows plots of radio power and optical luminosity versus redshift for the AGN and SF classes — the solid lines correspond to the survey completeness limits of 3.5 mJy and 19.4 mag for the NVSS and 2dFGRS respectively. Galaxies below these lines will be excluded from our sample. Note that most of the SF galaxies are weak radio sources, lying close to the NVSS cutoff at all redshifts, while most of the AGN galaxies lie well above the radio limit but start to drop below the optical cutoff at redshifts above 0.15.

## 5 Matches with IRAS sources

We expect many of the SF radio sources to be IRAS detections, based on the well–known correlation between radio continuum and far-infrared (FIR) luminosities (e.g. Wunderlich et al. 1987, Condon et al. 1991). For spiral galaxies, $`S_{60\mu \mathrm{m}}100S_{1.4\mathrm{GHz}}`$ (e.g. Condon & Broderick 1988, Rowan–Robinson et al. 1993), so NVSS should detect most galaxies in the IRAS Faint Source Catalog (which has a flux density limit of 0.28 Jy at $`60\mu \mathrm{m}`$).

Of the 36 galaxies classified as SF in Table 2, two (TGN222Z132 and XGN221Z023) lie in the 3% of the sky which has no IRAS coverage (Beichman et al. 1985). Of the remaining 34 galaxies, 27 (i.e. 79%) are detected at 60$`\mu `$m in the IRAS Point Source Catalog or Faint Source Catalog (FSC). Figure 7 compares the radio continuum (1.4 GHz) and IRAS ($`60\mu \mathrm{m}`$) flux densities for these galaxies (for galaxies undetected by IRAS we show an upper limit of 0.28 Jy, corresponding to the completeness level of the FSC). If we exclude one galaxy with anomalously strong 60$`\mu `$m emission as discussed below, the mean FIR–radio ratio Q<sub>60</sub> = S<sub>60μm</sub>/S$`_{1.4GHz}`$ for the IRAS–detected galaxies is 112$`\pm `$8, i.e. close to that derived from other studies.

One galaxy (TMS206Z015) has an unusually high value of Q<sub>60</sub>=380, with much stronger FIR emission than would be expected from the radio continuum flux density. The most likely explanation is confusion in the IRAS beam, since this galaxy lies in a group and appears to be interacting with a companion.

## 6 Conclusions

Based on a study of 30 fields from the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, we find that about 1.5% of 2dFGRS galaxies brighter than $`b_\mathrm{J}<19.4`$ magnitude are candidate identifications for 1.4 GHz NVSS radio sources. Of these about 80–85% will turn out, after closer examination, to be ‘real’ associations. Thus if the whole 2dFGRS contains 250,000 galaxies, we expect to identify about 4,000 candidate matches with NVSS by the time the 2dFGRS is complete. About 60% of these galaxies will be AGN (radio galaxies and some Seyferts) and 40% star–forming galaxies. For galaxies south of declination $`30^{}`$, we will also have 843 MHz radio flux density measurements from the Sydney University Molonglo Sky Survey (SUMSS; Bock et al. 1999), and will be able to measure radio spectral indices.

The final sample will be by far the largest (and most homogeneous) sample of radio–galaxy spectra ever obtained, and will allow us to study both the AGN and starburst radio populations out to redshift $`z0.3`$, and to look for evidence of evolution over this redshift range. As the present paper goes to press, the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey is 20% complete and our sample has already grown to more than 700 galaxies. This larger sample will be analysed in more detail in a forthcoming paper.

## Acknowledgements

We thank the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey team for allowing us early access to their data. We also acknowledge the essential contribution of the many people, at the AAO and elsewhere, who have contributed to the building and operation of the 2dF facility. Finally, we thank the two anonymous referees of this paper for their careful reading and helpful suggestions.

The IRAS flux densities quoted in Table 2 were obtained from the NASA Extragalactic Database (NED).

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