Radio properties of the Shapley Concentration - IV. The A3528 cluster complex

We report and discuss the results of a 22-cm radio survey carried out with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) covering the A3528 complex, a chain formed by the merging ACO clusters A3528-A3530-A3532, located in the central region of the Shapley Concentration. Simultaneous 13-cm observations are also presented. Our final catalogue includes a total of 106 radio sources above the flux density limit of 0.8 mJy. By cross-correlation with optical and spectroscopic catalogues we found 32 optical counterparts, nine of them belonging to the A3528 complex. We explored the effects of cluster mergers on the radio emission properties of radio galaxies by means of the radio luminosity function (RLF) and radio source counts. We found that the radio source counts are consistent with the background counts, as already found for the A3558 complex. The RLF for this complex is consistent, in both shape and normalization, with the general cluster luminosity function for early-type galaxies derived by Ledlow & Owen. This result is different from the one we obtained for the A3558 merging complex, the RLF of which is significantly lower than that derived by Ledlow & Owen. We propose that the different stage of the merger is responsible for the different RLFs in the two cluster complexes in the core of the Shapley Concentration. The early stage of merger for the A3528 complex, proposed by many authors, may not yet have affected the radio properties of cluster galaxies, while in the more much advanced merger in the A3558 region we actually see the effects of this process on the radio emission.