Journal Article

A high black-hole-to-host mass ratio in a lensed AGN in the early Universe

Price, Sedona H., Glazebrook, Karl, Chemerynska, Iryna, Whitaker, Katherine E., Plat, Adèle, Brammer, Gabriel B., Zitrin, Adi, Atek, Hakim, Endsley, Ryan, Leja, Joel, Fujimoto, Seiji, Williams, Christina C., Curtis-Lake, Emma, Dayal, Pratika, Juneau, Stéphanie, van Dokkum, Pieter, Bogdán, Ákos, Fudamoto, Yoshinobu, Nelson, Erica, Marchesini, Danilo, Maseda, Micheal V., Stark, Daniel P., Charlot, Stéphane, Setton, David J., Feldmann, Robert, Oesch, Pascal A., Furtak, Lukas J., Goulding, Andy D., Miller, Tim B., Cutler, Sam E., Pan, Richard, Wang, Bingjie, Weaver, John R., Labbé, Ivo, Greene, Jenny E., de Graaff, Anna, Kokorev, Vasily, Bezanson, Rachel

2024

Overview

Early JWST observations have uncovered a population of red sources that might represent a previously overlooked phase of supermassive black hole growth 1 – 3 . One of the most intriguing examples is an extremely red, point-like object that was found to be triply imaged by the strong lensing cluster Abell 2744 (ref.  4 ). Here we present deep JWST/NIRSpec observations of this object, Abell2744-QSO1. The spectroscopy confirms that the three images are of the same object, and that it is a highly reddened ( A V  ≃ 3) broad emission line active galactic nucleus at a redshift of z spec  = 7.0451 ± 0.0005. From the width of Hβ (full width at half-maximum = 2,800 ± 250 km s −1 ), we derive a black hole mass of M BH = 4 − 1 + 2 × 1 0 7 M ⊙ . We infer a very high ratio of black-hole-to-galaxy mass of at least 3%, an order of magnitude more than that seen in local galaxies 5 and possibly as high as 100%. The lack of strong metal lines in the spectrum together with the high bolometric luminosity ( L bol  = (1.1 ± 0.3) × 10 45  erg s −1 ) indicate that we are seeing the black hole in a phase of rapid growth, accreting at 30% of the Eddington limit. The rapid growth and high black-hole-to-galaxy mass ratio of Abell2744-QSO1 suggest that it may represent the missing link between black hole seeds 6 and one of the first luminous quasars 7 . JWST/NIRSpec observations of Abell2744-QSO1 show a high black-hole-to-host mass ratio in the early Universe, which indicates that we are seeing the black hole in a phase of rapid growth, accreting at 30% of the Eddington limit.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: 639/33/34/863 / 639/33/34/864 / Active galactic nuclei / Astrophysics / Black holes / Cosmology and Extra-Galactic Astrophysics / Emission lines / Galaxies / Humanities and Social Sciences / Luminosity / multidisciplinary / Red shift / Science / Science (multidisciplinary) / Sciences of the Universe / Space telescopes / Spectroscopy / Spectrum analysis / Star & galaxy formation / Supermassive black holes / X-rays