A CEERS Discovery of an Accreting Supermassive Black Hole 570 Myr after the Big Bang: Identifying a Progenitor of Massive z > 6 Quasars
Date Issued
2023
Author(s)
Larson, Rebecca L.
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Finkelstein, Steven L.
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Kocevski, Dale D.
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Hutchison, Taylor A.
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Trump, Jonathan R.
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Haro, Pablo Arrabal
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Bromm, Volker
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Cleri, Nikko J.
•
•
Fujimoto, Seiji
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Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S.
•
Koekemoer, Anton M.
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Papovich, Casey
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Pirzkal, Nor
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Tacchella, Sandro
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Zavala, Jorge A.
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Bagley, Micaela
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Behroozi, Peter
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Champagne, Jaclyn B.
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Cole, Justin W.
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Jung, Intae
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Morales, Alexa M.
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Yang, Guang
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Zhang, Haowen
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Zitrin, Adi
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Amorín, Ricardo O.
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Burgarella, Denis
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Casey, Caitlin M.
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Chávez Ortiz, Óscar A.
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Cox, Isabella G.
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Chworowsky, Katherine
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•
Gawiser, Eric
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•
Grogin, Norman A.
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Harish, Santosh
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Hathi, Nimish P.
•
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Holwerda, Benne W.
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Juneau, Stéphanie
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Leung, Gene C.K.
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Lucas, Ray A.
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McGrath, Elizabeth J.
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Pérez-González, Pablo G.
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Rigby, Jane R.
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Seillé, Lise Marie
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Simons, Raymond C.
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De La Vega, Alexander
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Weiner, Benjamin J.
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Wilkins, Stephen M.
•
Yung, L. Y.Aaron
Abstract
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.
Volume
953
Issue
2
Start page
L29
Issn Identifier
2041-8205
Rights
open.access
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