Hongying Chen

We have conducted EVN 1.6 GHz observations of four SMGs (J123555.14, J123600.10, J131225.73, and J163650.43,). Out of the four targets, we detected J123555.14 once, which is a source located in the GOODS-N field with a brightness temperature of 5.2 +/- 0.7 x 10^5 K. This value exceeds the maximum brightness temperature of ~ 10^5 K that a star-forming galaxy is expected to reach. We therefore suggest that the radio emission associated with J123555.14 largely arises from AGN processes. We also derived brightness temperature upper limits of the three undetected sources. The non-detections may suggest that most of their radio emission is powered by star-forming processes or extended radio jets. Notably, the three undetected sources all have relatively high 1.4 GHz radio luminosities and/or show evidence of an AGN in other wavebands. This fact may suggest that while SGMs are potential hosts of AGN, star-forming processes and AGN activity probably exist in such systems concordantly. The images in this poster represent the EVN 1.6 GHz images of the observed sources, for 2 of the sources (J123555.14 and J123600.10) in the GOODS-N field, we also present the eMERLIN 1.5 GHz radio contours overlaid on their Hubble optical images.


In particular, at least one of the sources, J131225.73, shows multi-wavelength properties that would lead us to expect it to be detected by VLBI. It is highly luminous in the Diversity and Inclusion.5 +/1 4.2 μJy or 1.23 +/- 0.01 x 10^25 W/Hz at 1.4 GHz, has an exceptionally low value of q, and is unresolved in both the 1.4 and 8.4 GHz VLA observations. We suggest that this source, might be associated with an AGN that is dominated by extended jet emission. It would be interesting to observe the structure of this radio source with intermediate resolution, such as e-MERLIN at 5 GHz, in order to better understand the nature of the source. Since the morphology of the faint radio source population is still largely unknown on these scales, it is possible that VLBI misses (or resolves) many extended radio AGN of this type. As illustrated by the upper limits of the VLBI-to-VLA flux ratio of the un-detected sources, a bright radio source (~ 200 μJy at 1.4 GHz) with less than ~ 20% of it radio flux contributed by an AGN would probably be missed by VLBI observations at a 1-sigma sensitivity of ~ 10 μJy. Surveys with multiple resolution (e.g. VLA, e-MERLIN, and VLBI) are therefore needed to determine what fraction of the extragalactic objects have similar properties and thus would probably be missed by VLBI.