DR. RUTA KALE

The origin of diffuse radio emission in galaxy clusters, the so-called radio halos and relics, has been a puzzle since several decades. We are carrying out a systematic search for diffuse radio emission in galaxy clusters using the GMRT called the Extended GMRT Radio Halo Survey. This ongoing survey aims to consolidate the statistics of the occurrence of radio halos and relics in a sample of 67 galaxy clusters in the redshift range 0.2-0.4. The speaker will present recent results from this survey and give an overview of new directions for future surveys in the light of the current understanding and the availability of new telescopes. The Planck satellite has recently discovered several galaxy clusters using the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect as a tracer. The speaker will present the discovery of a giant radio halo and a radio relic in two Planck clusters using the GMRT. The first sensitive radio images of these using the Jansky Very Large Array will also be presented.