Constraining the Origins of Radio Emission in Radio-quiet QSOs with High-resolution Observations from the Very Large Array

The origin of radio emission from radio-quiet quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) remains an elusive problem. It is clear AGN-powered jets drive the bulk of radio seen in radio-loud QSOs (RLQs), but generally all of the emission in radio-quiet QSOs (RQQs) is confined to the QSO host galaxy, making discerning any physical origins of the observed radio emission ambiguous to say the least. To untangle this ambiguity, we re-image the RQ subset of 129 RQQs from the volume-complete (0.2 < z < 0.3), optically selected sample of 178 QSOs introduced by Kimball et al. (2011). Using the VLA’s highest resolution A-configuration (~0.33" or ~1.3kpc at z=0.25), we resolve notable sub-galactic extended structures in about half of the RQQs, suggesting that small-scale jet behavior may well play a pivotal role in shaping the radio-quiet population along with the radio-loud.