DOI

https://doi.org/10.48717/mr73-9z79

Project

EO018

Title

e-EVN: ES100A, EO018A

Abstract

Using the VLA, Reines et al. (2020) identified a population of compact radio sources associated with dwarf galaxies. These radio sources are offset from the optical centres of said galaxies, have a low chance alignment probability, and can be explained by accreting intermediate mass black holes (AGN-like). Alternatively, Eftekhari et al. (2020) show that these radio sources are similar to the persistent counterpart of fast radio burst FRB 121102, which is also hosted in a dwarf galaxy. They argue that these radio sources could be associated with repeating FRB sources, and that they represent magnetar wind nebulae. Here we propose to observe 4 of these sources to a) further constrain their sizes and the amount of unresolved flux, b) better localise them within their host galaxies, in order to compare with future Hubble imaging and c) to search for potential associated FRBs. Currently very little is known about such compact radio sources in dwarf galaxies; our EVN observations will provide unique constraints on their nature. In the FRB nebula scenario, we expect the persistent sources to be unresolved and to have similar fluxes as on arcsecond scales, whereas in the AGN-like scenario they may be partially resolved.