A New Method to Separate Star-forming from AGN Galaxies at Intermediate Redshift : The Submillijansky Radio Population in the VLA-COSMOS Survey

We explore the properties of the submillijansky radio population at 20 cm by applying a newly developed optical color-based method to separate star forming (SF) from AGN galaxies at intermediate redshifts (z1.3) galaxies. We find, for the composition of the submillijansky radio population, that SF galaxies are not the dominant population at submillijansky flux levels, as previously often assumed, but that they make up an approximately constant fraction of 30-40% in the flux density range of ~50 microJy to 0.7 mJy. In summary, based on the entire VLA-COSMOS radio population at 20 cm, we find that the radio population at these flux densities is a mixture of roughly 30-40% of SF and 50-60% of AGN galaxies, with a minor contribution (~10%) of QSOs.
26 pages, 26 figures; accepted for publication in ApJS