FRAMEx. III. Radio Emission in the Immediate Vicinity of Radio-quiet AGNs

Abstract

We present follow-up results from the first Fundamental Reference AGN Monitoring Experiment (FRAMEx) X-ray/radio snapshot program of a volume-complete sample of local hard X-ray-selected active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Here, we added nine new sources to our previous volume-complete snapshot campaign, two of which are detected in 6 cm Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations. We also obtained deeper VLBA observations for a sample of nine AGNs not detected by our previous snapshot campaign. We recovered three sources with approximately twice the observing sensitivity. In contrast with lower-angular-resolution Very Large Array (VLA) studies, the majority of our sources continue to be undetected with the VLBA. The subparsec radio (6 cm) and X-ray (2–10 keV) emission shows no significant correlation, with L R/L X ranging from 10−8 to 10−4, and the majority of our sample lies well below the fiducial 10−5 relationship for coronal synchrotron emission. Additionally, our sources are not aligned with any of the proposed “fundamental” planes of black hole activity, which purport to unify black hole accretion in the M BH–L X–L R parameter space. The new detections in our deeper observations suggest that the radio emission may be produced by the synchrotron radiation of particles accelerated in low-luminosity outflows. Nondetections may be a result of synchrotron self-absorption at 6 cm in the radio core, similar to what has been observed in X-ray binaries transitioning from the radiatively inefficient state to a radiatively efficient state.