High-redshift radio sources provide plentiful opportunities for studying the formation and evolution of early galaxies and supermassive black holes. However, the number of known radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGN) above redshift 4 is rather limited. At high redshifts, it appears that blazars, with relativistically beamed jets pointing toward the observer, are in the majority compared to the radio-loud sources with jets misaligned with respect to the line of sight. To find more of these misaligned AGN, milliarcsecond-scale imaging studies carried out with very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) are needed, as they allow us to distinguish between compact-core-jet radio sources and those with more extended emission. Previous high-resolution VLBI studies revealed that some of the radio sources among blazar candidates in fact show unbeamed radio emission on milliarcsecond scales. The most accurate optical coordinates determined with the Gaia astrometric space mission are also useful in the classification process. Here, we report on dual-frequency imaging observations of 13 high-redshift (4 < z < 4.5) quasars at 1.7 and 5 GHz with the European VLBI Network. This sample increases the number of z > 4 radio sources for which VLBI observations are available by about a quarter. Using structural and physical properties, such as radio morphology, spectral index, variability, brightness temperature, as well as optical coordinates, we identified six blazars and six misaligned radio AGNs, with the remaining one tentatively identified as blazar.

Less than 200 radio-loud active galactic nuclei are known above redshift 4. Around 40 of them have been observed at milliarcsecond (mas) scale resolution with very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) technique. Some of them are unresolved, compact, relativistically beamed objects, and blazars with jets pointing at small angles to the observer's line of sight. But there are also objects with no sign of relativistic beaming possibly having larger jet inclination angles. In a couple of cases, X-ray observations indicate the presence of relativistic beaming contrary to the VLBI measurements made with the European VLBI Network. J1420+1205 is a prominent example, where our 30–100 mas-scale enhanced multi element remotely linked interferometer network radio observations revealed a rich structure reminiscent of a small radio galaxy. It shows a bright hotspot that might be related to the denser interstellar medium around a young galaxy at an early cosmological epoch.

Volonteri et al. (2011) found that the number of radio-loud quasars above redshift 4 calculated from the luminosity function (based upon Swift/BAT observations) is much smaller than the number estimated from the known high-redshift beamed sources, blazars, assuming that for every beamed source with a Lorentz factor of Γ, statistically 2Γ² non-beamed sources should exist. To explain the missing misaligned (non-beamed) population of high-redshift sources, they proposed various explanations, involving heavy optical obscuration and significantly different Lorentz factors at early cosmological epochs. Our EVN observations targeting high-redshift (z > 4) blazar candidates revealed 3 sources not showing relativistic beaming, but rather kpc-scale double structures. These three sources have significant radio emission resolved out with the EVN, while they are compact on ~ 5 − 10 arcsec scale. Our dual-frequency (1.5 and 5 GHz) e-MERLIN observations of these three sources revealed a rich morphology, bending jets, and hot spots with possible sites of interaction between the jets and the surrounding medium at intermediate scales.