A population-based approach to understanding radio AGN feedback with LOFAR

While previous studies suggest that the total kinetic power output from radio AGN jets is sufficient to offset radiative cooling in large-scale cosmological environments, many have relied on generalised scaling relations to estimate jet power from radio luminosity, neglecting additional important information such as source size and environment. I will here present our study of a large sample of LoTSS Deep Field radio AGN, for which we have inferred the cosmic evolution of kinetic jet powers using a physically motivated semi-analytical model for the first time. Initial analysis on a sample of 619 radio AGN at 𝑧<2.5 from LoTSS and LOFAR-VLBI images of the Lockman Hole (limiting angular resolutions of 6", 1".8 and 0".4) implied a population dominated by short-lived sources with lower jet powers. Incorporating this weighting towards shorter lifetimes and utilising ELAIS-N1 and Boötes LoTSS Deep Field data to expand our analysis to a sample of 5,187 objects, we derived jet kinetic luminosity functions and integrated kinetic luminosity densities for the radio AGN population out to 𝑧=2.5. We find the total power output per comoving volume to be ∼10^32–10^33 W Mpc^−3 across the full redshift range, with suggestions of moderate positive evolution from 𝑧=0 -1 and little evolution between 𝑧=1 and 𝑧=2. This broadly agrees with previous observational results and the expectations of cosmological models, strongly supporting the viability of radio AGN jet feedback across cosmic time.