MeerKAT Survey Reveals Diffuse Radio Emission in Distant Galaxy Clusters

This paper presents the results of a search for diffuse radio emission in a uniformly selected sample of 30 massive Sunyaev-Zel'dovich selected galaxy clusters at z > 1, using deep MeerKAT 1.28 GHz observations. The study provides the first statistical constraints on the evolution of cluster-scale diffuse emission beyond this redshift and analyzes the scaling relations between radio power and cluster mass. Diffuse radio halos were detected in eight clusters (27%), while the remaining 21 (70%) showed no emission. One additional cluster (3%) was excluded due to poor data quality. The halo detection rate in this high-redshift sample is lower than at intermediate redshift, but remains higher than the theoretical predictions. No cluster-scale radio relics or mini-halos were identified. The findings highlight MeerKAT's ability to probe non-thermal processes in the most distant clusters and the need for deeper, lower-frequency surveys to uncover faint diffuse emission and test the persistence of the radio power-mass relation across cosmic time. This research contributes to our understanding of galaxy cluster evolution and the distribution of radio emission in the distant universe.

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