Compact Radio Cores in Seyfert Galaxies

Abstract

We have observed a sample of 157 Seyfert galaxies with a 275 km baseline radio interferometer to search for compact, high brightness temperature radio emission from the active nucleus. We obtain the surprising result that compact radio cores are much more common in Seyfert 2 than in Seyfert 1 galaxies, which at first seems to be inconsistent with orientation unification schemes. We propose a model, involving optical depth effects in the narrow-line region, which can reconcile our result with the standard unified scheme. (Accepted for publication in ApJ 1994 Sep 10)