What can bent-jet radio galaxies teach us about their environment?
The recent advances in sensitivity of radio-frequency facilities have revealed complex structures in many bent-jet radio galaxies which complicates their classification. The nearby Perseus cluster is an astonishing case study for such sources. High sensitivity, high resolution Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) observations have resolved new structures associated with several bent-jet radio galaxies harbored within this cluster, including IC310 - the only known tailed radio galaxy with a gamma-ray counterpart. I will present different interpretations of their morphologies, involving interaction with bulk motions of intracluster gas and the galaxy’s orbit in the cluster. Such work is paving the way for the SKA surveys, which should detect roughly one million bent-jet radio galaxies, thereby calling for a redefinition of our classification schemes. In the prospect of such surveys, and complementary multi-wavelength observations, I will discuss how we could use bent-jet radio galaxies as tracers of the “cluster weather”. These early efforts, in revamping radio-jet classification schemes and developing novel analysis methods to characterize the intracluster medium, are essential for the upcoming cascade of detections.