The sub-mJy radio sky in the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South: source population

The sub-mJy radio population is a mixture of active systems, that is star-forming galaxies (SFGs) and active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We study a sample of 883 radio sources detected at 1.4 GHz in a deep Very Large Array survey of the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South that reaches a best rms sensitivity of 6 μJy. We have used a simple scheme to disentangle SFGs, radio-quiet (RQ), and radio-loud (RL) AGNs based on the combination of radio data with Chandra X-ray data and mid-infrared observations from Spitzer. We find that at flux densities between about 30 and 100 μJy, the radio population is dominated by SFGs (∼60 per cent) and that RQ AGNs become increasingly important over RL ones below 100 μJy. We also compare the host galaxy properties of the three classes in terms of morphology, optical colours and stellar masses. Our results show that both SFG and RQ AGN host galaxies have blue colours and late-type morphology while RL AGNs tend to be hosted by massive red galaxies with early-type morphology. This supports the hypothesis that radio emission in SFGs and RQ AGNs mainly comes from the same physical process: star formation in the host galaxy.