Many galaxy clusters host Megaparsec-scale radio halos, generated by ultrarelativistic electrons in the magnetized intracluster medium. Correlations between the synchrotron power of radio halos and the thermal properties of the hosting clusters were established in the last decade, including the connection between the presence of a halo and cluster mergers. The X-ray luminosity and redshift limited Extended GMRT Radio Halo Survey provides a rich and unique dataset for statistical studies of the halos. We uniformly analyze the radio and X-ray data for the GMRT cluster sample, and use the new Planck SZ catalog, to revisit the correlations between the power of radio halos and the thermal properties of galaxy clusters. We find that the radio power at 1.4 GHz scales with the cluster X-ray (0.1-2.4 keV) luminosity computed within R 500 as P 1.4 ∼ L 2.1±0.2 500. Our bigger and more homogenous sample confirms that the X-ray luminous (L 500 > 5 × 10 44 erg s −1 ) clusters branch into two populations -radio halos lie on the correlation, while clusters without radio halos have their radio upper limits well below that correlation. This bimodality remains if we excise cool cores from the X-ray luminosities. We also find that P 1.4 scales with the cluster integrated SZ signal within R 500 , measured by Planck, as P 1.4 ∼ Y 2.05±0.28 500 , in line with previous findings. However, contrary to previous studies that were limited by incompleteness and small sample size, we find that "SZluminous" Y 500 > 6 × 10 −5 Mpc 2 clusters show a bimodal behavior for the presence of radio halos, similar to that in the radio-X-ray diagram. Bimodality of both correlations can be traced to clusters dynamics, with radio halos found exclusively in merging clusters. These results confirm the key role of mergers for the origin of giant radio halos, suggesting that they trigger the relativistic particle acceleration.

The frequently observed association between giant radio halos and merging galaxy clusters has driven present theoretical models of non-thermal emission from galaxy clusters, which are based on the idea that the energy dissipated during cluster-cluster mergers could power the formation of radio halos. To quantitatively test the merger-halo connection we present the first statistical study based on deep radio data and X-ray observations of a complete X-ray selected sample of galaxy clusters with X-ray luminosity ≥ 5 × 10 44 erg/s and redshift 0.2 ≤ z ≤ 0.32. Using several methods to characterize cluster substructures, namely the power ratios, centroid shift and X-ray brightness concentration parameter, we show that clusters with and without radio halo can be quantitatively differentiated in terms of their dynamical properties. In particular, we confirm that radio halos are associated to dynamically disturbed clusters and cluster without radio halo are more "relaxed", with only a couple of exceptions where a disturbed cluster does not exhibit a halo.

Aims. We present the first results of an ongoing project devoted to the search of giant radio halos in galaxy clusters located in the redshift range z=0.2-0.4. One of the main goals of our study is to measure the fraction of massive galaxy clusters in this redshift interval hosting a radio halo, and to constrain the expectations of the particle re-acceleration model for the origin of non-thermal radio emission in galaxy clusters. Methods. We selected 27 REFLEX clusters and here we present Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) observations at 610 MHz for 11 of them. The sensitivity (1σ) in our images is in the range 35-100 µJy beam −1 for all clusters. Results. We found three new radio halos, doubling the number of halos known in the selected sample. In particular, giant radio halos were found in A 209 and RXCJ 2003.5-2323, and one halo (of smaller size) was found in RXCJ 1314.4-2515. Candidate extended emission on smaller scale was found around the central galaxy in A 3444 which deserves further investigation. Furthermore, a radio relic was found in A 521, and two relics were found in RXCJ 1314.5-2515. The remaining six clusters observed do not host extended emission of any kind.