WISE-NVSS selected obscured and ultraluminous quasars with compact radio jets

Active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback at z similar to 1-3 is believed to take place in the presence of thick columns of gas and dust, leading to heavily obscured systems that are challenging to detect at optical and X-ray wavelengths but are transparent at radio and mid-IR (MIR) wavelengths. MIR color diagnostics using the widefield infrared space explorer (WISE) observations can identify the most luminous and heavily obscured AGNs, which are believed to represent a transient phase of rapid massive black hole growth. By combining both mid-IR and radio diagnostics, we have identified a sample of 155 ultraluminous and obscured quasars (0.4<z<3) selected to have extremely red mid-IR colors in WISE and compact, bright (>7 mJy) radio emission in the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) and Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-one centimeters (FIRST). High-resolution very large array (VLA) imaging has revealed compact source morphologies on angular scales <0.2 '' (1.7 kpc at z similar to 2) for the majority of our sources. Broadband radio spectra of the entire sample, constructed from our 10 GHz VLA observations and archival radio data show that 63% of the sample has peaked or curved spectral shapes consistent with those typically seen in young radio AGN (e.g., gigahertz peaked spectrum [GPS] and compact steep spectrum [CSS] sources). Overall, our sample is consistent with a population of recently triggered, young radio jets caught in a unique evolutionary stage in which they reside in a dense interstellar medium (ISM).