Luminous black holes outpace host galaxy growth in the early universe

Paper Title:

EIGER V. Characterizing the Host Galaxies of Luminous Quasars at $z\gtrsim6$

Published on:

8 September 2023

Primary Category:

Astrophysics of Galaxies

Paper Authors:

Minghao Yue,

Anna-Christina Eilers,

Robert A. Simcoe,

Ruari Mackenzie,

Jorryt Matthee,

Daichi Kashino,

Rongmon Bordoloi,

Simon J. Lilly,

Rohan P. Naidu

Bullets

Key Details

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JWST observed 6 luminous quasars at z=5.9-7.1 with NIRCam

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Detected 3 quasar host galaxies, with masses around 10^10 solar masses

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3 other quasars had non-detections, implying upper limits around 10^10-10^11 solar masses

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Black hole masses are 10^9-10^10 solar masses from H-beta emission lines

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Black hole to host mass ratios are 10-100x higher than local galaxies

Explore the topics in this paper

black hole growth

early universe

high redshift quasars

host galaxy masses

jwst observations

AI generated summary

Luminous black holes outpace host galaxy growth in the early universe

This paper reports on JWST observations of 6 luminous quasars at redshifts of 5.9-7.1. It finds 3 quasar host galaxies with masses around 10^10 solar masses. The other 3 quasars had non-detections, implying upper limits around 10^10-10^11 solar masses. The black hole masses are 10^9-10^10 solar masses. This implies these luminous quasars have black hole to host mass ratios 10-100x higher than the local relation, suggesting early black hole growth outpaced the host galaxies in these extreme objects.