Landing page for project EM169

We propose to carry out a detection experiment at L-band (18cm) to demonstrate or rule out the presence of compact radio emission from three ulta high-redshift, young galaxies (8 < z < 12), with stellar masses ~10^8 Msun discovered by the JWST, which have NVSS and LoTSS radio counterparts. The radio emission is unlikely due to star formation since the implied radio powers place these among the most powerful radio galaxies, but an EVN+e-MERLIN detection could provide the ultimate evidence for AGN activity. A VLBI detection would be a true breakthrough result, especially considering that the central black hole is most-likely orders of magnitude less massive than SMBH at the peak epoch of AGN activity! While the presence of massive galaxies when the Universe was < 500 Myr old is already puzzling, the presence of active nuclei at this stage has significant implications for models seeking to understand the processes of AGN triggering and AGN feedback on host galaxies, as well as to studies seeking to understand the life-cycle of radio AGN. This proposal is a first step towards understanding these processes and time-scales, which are essential to understanding galaxy assembly and evolution.

This data is part of the archive of VLBI data maintained by JIVE on behalf of the EVN, a network of radio telescopes located primarily in Europe and Asia, with additional antennas in South Africa. The EVN archive itself has the DOI https://handle.test.datacite.org/10.17616/R3Z197