Dwarf Galaxies with Radio-excess AGNs in the VLA Sky Survey

TL;DR

This paper systematically identifies radio-excess active galactic nuclei in dwarf galaxies using VLASS data, establishing a new IRRC-based criterion, and reports the discovery of several new AGNs and variable radio sources in these low-mass galaxies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel IRRC-based method to select radio-excess AGNs in dwarf galaxies and provides the first catalog of such objects in the local universe.

Findings

Identified 10 radio-excess AGNs in dwarf galaxies.

Discovered 8 variable radio sources in dwarf galaxies.

First-time identification of AGNs in some dwarf galaxies.

Abstract

We present a systematic search for radio active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in dwarf galaxies using recent observations taken by the Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS). To select these objects, we first establish a criterion to identify radio-excess AGNs using the infrared-radio correlation (IRRC) parameter, $q$, that describes the tight relation between radio and IR emission in star forming (SF) galaxies. We find a $2\sigma$ threshold of $q < 1.94$ to select radio-excess AGNs, which is derived from a sample of $\sim 7,000$ galaxies across the full mass range in the NASA-Sloan Atlas (NSA) that have radio and IR detections from VLASS and the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, respectively. We create catalogs of radio-excess AGNs and SF galaxies and make these available to the community. Applying our criterion to dwarf galaxies with stellar masses $M_\star \lesssim 3 \times 10^9 M_\odot$ and redshifts $z \le 0.15$, and carefully removing interlopers, we find 10 radio-excess AGNs with radio-optical positional offsets between $\sim$ 0 and 2.3 arcseconds (0 - 2.7 kpc). Based on statistical arguments and emission line diagnostics, we expect the majority of these radio-excess AGNs to be associated with the dwarf host galaxies rather than background AGNs. Five of the objects have evidence for hosting AGNs at other wavelengths, and 5 objects are identified as AGNs in dwarf galaxies for the first time. We also identify 8 variable radio sources in dwarf galaxies by comparing the VLASS epoch 1 and epoch 2 observations to FIRST detections presented in arXiv:1909.04670.