Deciphering the Large-scale Environment of Radio Galaxies in the Local Universe. II. A Statistical Analysis of Environmental Properties

Abstract

In our previous analysis we investigated the large-scale environment of two samples of radio galaxies (RGs) in the local universe (i.e., with redshifts z src ≤ 0.15), classified as FR I and FR II on the basis of their radio morphology. The analysis was carried out using (i) extremely homogeneous catalogs and (ii) a new method, known as cosmological overdensity, to investigate their large-scale environments. We concluded that, independently of the shape of their radio extended structure, RGs inhabit galaxy-rich large-scale environments with similar characteristics and richness. In the present work, we first highlight additional advantages of our procedure, which does not suffer cosmological biases and/or artifacts, and then we carry out an additional statistical test to strengthen our previous results. We also investigate properties of RG environments using those of the cosmological neighbors. We find that large-scale environments of both FR Is and FR IIs are remarkably similar and independent of the properties of central RG. Finally, we highlight the importance of comparing radio sources in the same redshift bins to obtain a complete overview of their large-scale environments.