The B3-VLA CSS sample. VIII: New optical identifications from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The ultraviolet-optical spectral energy distribution of the young radio sources

TL;DR

This study enhances the understanding of young radio sources by increasing optical identifications using SDSS data, analyzing their spectral energy distributions, and exploring the origins of UV excess in host galaxies.

Contribution

It provides new optical identifications and photometric redshifts for faint galaxies and quasars in the CSS/GPS sample, and investigates the UV excess origins in these young radio source hosts.

Findings

Most galaxies show UV excess compared to local ellipticals.

UV excess strongly depends on redshift and may originate from a hidden quasar or young stars.

UV properties suggest merger-triggered star formation delayed from radio source onset.

Abstract

Compact steep-spectrum radio sources and giga-hertz peaked spectrum radio sources (CSS/GPS) are generally considered to be mostly young radio sources. In recent years we studied at many wavelengths a sample of these objects selected from the B3-VLA catalog: the B3-VLA CSS sample. Only ~ 60 % of the sources were optically identified. We aim to increase the number of optical identifications and study the properties of the host galaxies of young radio sources. We cross-correlated the CSS B3-VLA sample with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), DR7, and complemented the SDSS photometry with available GALEX (DR 4/5 and 6) and near-IR data from UKIRT and 2MASS. We obtained new identifications and photometric redshifts for eight faint galaxies and for one quasar and two quasar candidates. Overall we have 27 galaxies with SDSS photometry in five bands, for which we derived the ultraviolet-optical spectral energy distribution (UV-O-SED). We extended our investigation to additional CSS/GPS selected from the literature. Most of the galaxies show an excess of ultra-violet (UV) radiation compared with the UV-O-SED of local radio-quiet ellipticals. We found a strong dependence of the UV excess on redshift and analyzed it assuming that it is generated either from the nucleus (hidden quasar) or from a young stellar population (YSP). We also compare the UV-O-SEDs of our CSS/GPS sources with those of a selection of large size (LSO) powerful radio sources from the literature. If the major process of the UV excess is caused by a YSP, our conclusion is that it is the result of the merger process that also triggered the onset of the radio source with some time delay. We do not see evidence for a major contribution from a YSP triggered by the radio sources itself.