Published in The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review,
Volume 18, Issue 1-2, pp. 1-65, 2010.
For a PDF version of the article, click here.
astro-ph/0908.1896
Abstract. We review the statistical properties of the main
populations of
radio sources, as emerging from radio and millimeter sky surveys.
Recent determinations of local luminosity functions are presented
and compared with earlier estimates still in widespread use. A
number of unresolved issues are discussed. These include: the
(possibly luminosity-dependent) decline of source space densities at
high redshifts; the possible dichotomies between evolutionary
properties of low- versus high-luminosity and of flat- versus
steep-spectrum AGN-powered radio sources; and the nature of sources
accounting for the upturn of source counts at sub-mJy levels. It is
shown that straightforward extrapolations of evolutionary models,
accounting for both the far-IR counts and redshift distributions of
star-forming galaxies, match the radio source counts at flux-density
levels of tens of µJy remarkably well. We consider the
statistical properties of rare but physically very interesting
classes of sources, such as GHz Peak Spectrum and ADAF/ADIOS
sources, and radio afterglows of
-ray
bursts. We also
discuss the exploitation of large-area radio surveys to investigate
large scale structure through studies of clustering and the
Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect. Finally we briefly describe the
potential of the new and forthcoming generations of radio
telescopes. A compendium of source counts at different frequencies
is given in an appendix.
Keywords: Radio continuum: galaxies, Galaxies: active, Galaxies: starburst, Galaxies: statistics, Quasars: general
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