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Description
Restarted radio galaxies represent a unique tool to investigate the duty cycle of the jet activity in Active Galactic Nuclei. Due to a sharp discontinuity of the GHz spectral index distribution within its lobes, the radio galaxy 3C388 has for long being claimed to be a peculiar example of AGN with multi-epoch activity The goal of this work is to perform for the first time a spatially resolved study of the radio spectrum of this source down to MHz-frequencies, in order to investigate its radiative age and constrain its duty cycle. We have used new low frequency observations at 144MHz performed with the Low Frequency Array and at 350MHz performed with the Very Large Array combined with archival data at higher frequencies (614, 1400, 4850MHz). Results. We find that the spectral indices in the lower frequency range 144-614MHz have flatter values ({alpha}_low_~0.55-1.14) than those observed in the higher frequency range 1400-4850MHz ({alpha}_high_~0.75-1.57) but follow the same distribution across the lobes, with a systematic steepening towards the edges. However, the spectral shape throughout the source is not uniform and often deviates from standard models. This suggests that mixing of different particle populations is occurring, although it remains difficult to understand whether this is caused by observational limitations (insufficient spatial resolution and/or projection effects) or by the intrinsic presence of multiple particle populations, possibly related to the two different outbursts. By using single-injection radiative models we compute that the total source age is <~80Myr and that the duty cycle is about t_on_/t_tot_~60%, which is enough to prevent the intracluster medium from cooling according to X-ray estimates. While to date the radio spectral distribution of 3C388 remains a rare case among radio galaxies, multi-frequency surveys performed with new generation instruments will soon allow us to investigate whether more sources with the same characteristics do actually exist.
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