A revised statistical estimate of the counts of faint radio sources at 5 GHz

A P(D) experiment with the 100-m reflector of MPIfR at 5 GHz has produced an estimate of the counts of faint extragalactic radio sources at flux densities approximately 1 mJy. The surface densities of sources are found to be substantially lower than those derived from a previous experiment of this type carried out with the Parkes Radio Telescope, and an instrumental error in the earlier work is identified and discussed. The new results are in agreement with simple extrapolations of direct source counts, and the cosmological implications are briefly considered. (author)