High-resolution VLA Imaging of Obscured Quasars: Young Radio Jets Caught in a Dense ISM

Abstract

We present new sub-arcsecond-resolution Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) imaging at 10 GHz of 155 ultra-luminous ($L_{\mathrm{bol}}\sim 10^{11.7-14.2}{L}_{\odot }$) and heavily obscured quasars with redshifts $z\sim 0.4-3$. The sample was selected to have extremely red mid-infrared (MIR)-optical color ratios based on data from Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) along with a detection of bright, unresolved radio emission from the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) or Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters (FIRST) Survey. Our high-resolution VLA observations have revealed that the majority of the sources in our sample (93 out of 155) are compact on angular scales $<0.2^{\prime \prime }$ ($\le 1.7$ kpc at $z\sim 2$). The radio luminosities, linear extents, and lobe pressures of our sources are similar to young radio active galactic nuclei (AGN; e.g., Gigahertz Peaked Spectrum, GPS, and Compact Steep Spectrum, CSS, sources), but their space density is considerably lower. Application of a simple adiabatic lobe expansion model suggests relatively young dynamical ages ($\sim 10^{4-7}$ years), relatively high ambient ISM densities ($\sim 1-10^4$ cm${}^{-3}$), and modest lobe expansion speeds ($\sim 30-10,000$ km s${}^{-1}$). Thus, we find our sources to be consistent with a population of newly triggered, young jets caught in a unique evolutionary stage in which they still reside within the dense gas reservoirs of their hosts. Based on their radio luminosity function and dynamical ages, we estimate only $\sim 20\%$ of classical large scale FRI/II radio galaxies could have evolved directly from these objects. We speculate that the WISE-NVSS sources might first become GPS or CSS sources, of which some might ultimately evolve into larger radio galaxies.

Accepted for publication in ApJ, 38 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables

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