We investigate the influence of major mergers on the radio emission of
elliptical galaxies. We use a complete sample of close pairs, which contains
475 merging and 1828 non-merging paired elliptical galaxies of M_r<-21.5
selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. In addition, a control sample of
2000 isolated field galaxies is used for comparison. We cross-identify the
optical galaxies with the radio surveys of FIRST and NVSS. We find that the
radio fraction of merging paired galaxies is about 6%, which is slightly higher
than the 5% obtained for non-merging paired galaxies, although these values are
consistent with each other owing to the large uncertainty caused by the limited
sample. The radio fraction is twice as that of isolated galaxies, which is less
than 3%. Radio emission of elliptical galaxies is only slightly affected by
major mergers, but predominantly depends on their optical luminosities.
Therefore, merging is not important in triggering the radio emission of
elliptical galaxies.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in A&A, minor
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