First Detections of Compact AGN-triggered Radio Cores in RQ AGNs in the ECDFS

The mechanism triggering the radio emission in Radio-Quiet (RQ) Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), found to be a relevant component of the faint radio population  in deep fields,  is hotly debated.  Most RQ AGNs are unresolved or barely resolved at a few arcsec scale, comparable to the host galaxy size. RQ AGNs have also been found to share many properties with Star Forming Galaxies (SFG). They have similar radio luminosities and similar optical- /infrared-to-radio flux ratios. Their radio luminosity functions show similar evolutionary trends, and their host galaxies have similar colours, optical morphologies and stellar masses. For all these reasons it was concluded that the radio emission in such RQ AGNs is mainly triggered by star formation (SF). However in the local Universe (z<0.5) it is well known that both AGN and SF processes can contribute to the total radio emission in RQ AGNs (see e.g., Seyfert 2 galaxies), and there is growing evidence that composite SF/AGN systems are common at mid to high redshift (z>1-2).
We used the Australian Long Baseline Array to observe a number of RQ AGNs in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South (ECDFS), and we detected compact, high-surface-brightness radio cores in some of them.
Our pilot study shows that at least some of the sources classified as radio quiet contain an AGN that can contribute significantly (~50% or more) to the total radio emission. This is a  first direct evidence of the presence of such AGN-triggered radio emission in RQ AGNs at cosmological redshifts.