Journal Article

A CEERS Discovery of an Accreting Supermassive Black Hole 570 Myr after the Big Bang: Identifying a Progenitor of Massive z > 6 Quasars

Leung, Gene C. K, Wilkins, Stephen M, Cleri, Nikko J, Gawiser, Eric, Pirzkal, Nor, Zitrin, Adi, Fujimoto, Seiji, Juneau, Stéphanie, Bromm, Volker, Koekemoer, Anton M, Behroozi, Peter, Fontana, Adriano, Amorín, Ricardo O, Rigby, Jane R, Grazian, Andrea, Weiner, Benjamin J, Yang, Guang, Seillé, Lise-Marie, Lucas, Ray A, Cole, Justin W, Zhang, Haowen, Arrabal Haro, Pablo, Bagley, Micaela, Finkelstein, Steven L, Yung, L. Y. Aaron, and The CEERS Team , and The CEERS Team, Larson, Rebecca L, Hutchison, Taylor A, Harish, Santosh, Jung, Intae, Chávez Ortiz, Óscar A, Cox, Isabella G, Holwerda, Benne W, McGrath, Elizabeth J, Trump, Jonathan R, Dickinson, Mark, de la Vega, Alexander, Champagne, Jaclyn B, Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S, Hirschmann, Michaela, Simons, Raymond C, Burgarella, Denis, Grogin, Norman A, Hathi, Nimish P, Kocevski, Dale D, Casey, Caitlin M, Tacchella, Sandro, Chworowsky, Katherine, Morales, Alexa M, Zavala, Jorge A, Papovich, Casey, Pérez-González, Pablo G

2023

Overview

We report the discovery of an accreting supermassive black hole at z = 8.679. This galaxy, denoted here as CEERS_1019, was previously discovered as a Lyα-break galaxy by Hubble with a Lyα redshift from Keck. As part of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey, we have observed this source with JWST/NIRSpec, MIRI, NIRCam, and NIRCam/WFSS and uncovered a plethora of emission lines. The Hβ line is best fit by a narrow plus a broad component, where the latter is measured at 2.5σ with an FWHM ∼1200 km s−1. We conclude this originates in the broadline region of an active galactic nucleus (AGN). This is supported by the presence of weak high-ionization lines (N V, N IV], and C III]), as well as a spatial point-source component. The implied mass of the black hole (BH) is log (M BH/M ⊙) = 6.95 ± 0.37, and we estimate that it is accreting at 1.2 ± 0.5 times the Eddington limit. The 1–8 μm photometric spectral energy distribution shows a continuum dominated by starlight and constrains the host galaxy to be massive (log M/M⊙ ∼9.5) and highly star-forming (star formation rate, or SFR ∼ 30 M⊙ yr−1; log sSFR ∼ − 7.9 yr−1). The line ratios show that the gas is metal-poor (Z/Z ⊙ ∼ 0.1), dense (n e ∼ 103 cm−3), and highly ionized (log U ∼ − 2.1). We use this present highest-redshift AGN discovery to place constraints on BH seeding models and find that a combination of either super-Eddington accretion from stellar seeds or Eddington accretion from very massive BH seeds is required to form this object.

• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• Subject: Active galactic nuclei / Black holes / Deposition / Emission lines / Galaxies / Galaxy distribution / Ionization / Quasars / Red shift / Spectral energy distribution / Star & galaxy formation / Star formation / Star formation rate / Supermassive black holes