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

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

doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07184-8

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

Nature. 2024 Apr;628(8006):57-61. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07184-8. Epub 2024 Feb 14.

Authors

Lukas J Furtak¹, Ivo Labbé², Adi Zitrin³, Jenny E Greene⁴, Pratika Dayal⁵, Iryna Chemerynska⁶, Vasily Kokorev⁵, Tim B Miller^{7

8}, Andy D Goulding⁴, Anna de Graaff⁹, Rachel Bezanson¹⁰, Gabriel B Brammer¹¹, Sam E Cutler¹², Joel Leja^{13

14

15}, Richard Pan¹⁶, Sedona H Price¹⁰, Bingjie Wang^{13

14

15}, John R Weaver¹², Katherine E Whitaker^{11

12}, Hakim Atek⁶, Ákos Bogdán¹⁷, Stéphane Charlot⁶, Emma Curtis-Lake¹⁸, Pieter van Dokkum⁷, Ryan Endsley¹⁹, Robert Feldmann²⁰, Yoshinobu Fudamoto^{21

22}, Seiji Fujimoto¹⁹, Karl Glazebrook², Stéphanie Juneau²³, Danilo Marchesini¹⁶, Micheal V Maseda²⁴, Erica Nelson²⁵, Pascal A Oesch^{11

26}, Adèle Plat²⁷, David J Setton¹⁰, Daniel P Stark²⁷, Christina C Williams^{23

27}

Affiliations

¹ Physics Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er-Sheva, Israel. [email protected].
² Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
³ Physics Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er-Sheva, Israel.
⁴ Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
⁵ Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
⁶ Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France.
⁷ Department of Astronomy, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
⁸ Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
⁹ Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany.
¹⁰ Department of Physics and Astronomy and PITT PACC, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
¹¹ Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN), Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
¹² Department of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA.
¹³ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
¹⁴ Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
¹⁵ Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
¹⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA.
¹⁷ Center for Astrophysics ∣ Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹⁸ Centre for Astrophysics Research, Department of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK.
¹⁹ Department of Astronomy, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
²⁰ Institute for Computational Science, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
²¹ Waseda Research Institute for Science and Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan.
²² National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan.
²³ NSF's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, Tucson, AZ, USA.
²⁴ Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
²⁵ Department for Astrophysical and Planetary Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA.
²⁶ Department of Astronomy, University of Geneva, Versoix, Switzerland.
²⁷ Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.

PMID: 38354833
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07184-8

Abstract

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 $M_{BH} = 4_{- 1}^{+ 2} \times 1 0^{7} M_{⊙}$ . 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 galaxies⁵ 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) × 10⁴⁵ 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 seeds⁶ and one of the first luminous quasars⁷.