VLASS reveals high incidence of radio detections and some extreme morphologies in a sample of low-z LoBAL quasars

Little is known about the radio properties of Low-ionization Broad Absorption Line quasars (LoBALs), a rare subpopulation (~1-3%) characterized by extreme outflows seen as broad, blue-shifted absorptions of low-ionization ions in their rest-frame UV spectra. Believed to be mostly radio-quiet, stacked radio data from the FIRST survey showed that LoBALs are likely to be radio-intermediate in brightness, hinting at a transitional radio state. Disturbed morphologies and dominance of mergers in the optical suggest that LoBALs might be a short-lived, evolutionary phase in the life of quasars, when accretion disk driven winds are capable of affecting the growth of the host galaxy, but there is little consensus on the location and drivers of the observed outflows. If LoBALs show radio emission variations and/or extended jets, radio feedback may contribute to the evolution of their galaxies. In this work, we analyze the radio continuum images (2-4 GHz) from the Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS; 2017-2024) to characterize the radio emission (detections and morphologies) of a volume-limited sample of 22 optically-selected LoBALs at 0.5 < z < 0.6. We find unusually high incidence of radio detections (7/22, 32%). Most of the emission is faint, but two objects show extreme radio morphologies with distinct components and likely jet/lobe structures. Our results highlight the need to better understand the nature of the radio emission in LoBALs in order to explain this subpopulation of quasars.