How does environment affect the morphology of radio AGN?
  Galaxies hosting Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) with bent radio jets are used
as tracers of dense environments, such as galaxy groups and clusters. The
assumption behind using these jets is that they are bent under ram pressure
from a dense, gaseous medium through which the host galaxy moves. However,
there are many AGN in groups and clusters with jets that are not bent, which
leads us to ask: why are some AGN jets affected so much by their environment
while others are seemingly not? We present the results of an environmental
study on a sample of 185 AGN with bent jets and 191 AGN with unbent jets in
which we characterize their environments by searching for neighboring galaxies
using a Friends-of-Friends algorithm. We find that AGN with bent jets are
indeed more likely to reside in groups and clusters, while unbent AGN are more
likely to exist in singles or pairs. When considering only AGN in groups of 3
or more galaxies, we find that bent AGN are more likely to exist in halos with
more galaxies than unbent AGN. We also find that unbent AGN are more likely
than bent AGN to be the brightest group galaxy. Additionally, groups hosting
AGN with bent jets have a higher density of galaxies than groups hosting unbent
AGN. Curiously, there is a population of AGN with bent jets that are in
seemingly less dense regions of space, indicating they may be embedded in a
cosmic web filament. Overall, our results indicate that bent doubles are more
likely to exist in in larger, denser, and less relaxed environments than unbent
doubles, potentially linking a galaxy's radio morphology to its environment.
