A dormant overmassive black hole in the early Universe

Ignas Juodžbalis (), Roberto Maiolino, William M. Baker, Sandro Tacchella, Jan Scholtz, Francesco D’Eugenio, Joris Witstok, Raffaella Schneider, Alessandro Trinca, Rosa Valiante, Christa DeCoursey, Mirko Curti, Stefano Carniani, Jacopo Chevallard, Anna Graaff, Santiago Arribas, Jake S. Bennett, Martin A. Bourne, Andrew J. Bunker, Stéphane Charlot, Brian Jiang, Sophie Koudmani, Michele Perna, Brant Robertson, Debora Sijacki, Hannah Übler, Christina C. Williams and Chris Willott
Additional contact information
Ignas Juodžbalis: University of Cambridge
Roberto Maiolino: University of Cambridge
William M. Baker: University of Cambridge
Sandro Tacchella: University of Cambridge
Jan Scholtz: University of Cambridge
Francesco D’Eugenio: University of Cambridge
Joris Witstok: University of Cambridge
Raffaella Schneider: ‘Sapienza’ Università di Roma
Alessandro Trinca: ‘Sapienza’ Università di Roma
Rosa Valiante: INAF
Christa DeCoursey: University of Arizona
Mirko Curti: European Southern Observatory
Stefano Carniani: Scuola Normale Superiore
Jacopo Chevallard: University of Oxford
Anna Graaff: Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie
Santiago Arribas: CSIC-INTA
Jake S. Bennett: Harvard University
Martin A. Bourne: University of Cambridge
Andrew J. Bunker: University of Oxford
Stéphane Charlot: Sorbonne Université, CNRS
Brian Jiang: University of Cambridge
Sophie Koudmani: University of Cambridge
Michele Perna: CSIC-INTA
Brant Robertson: University of California
Debora Sijacki: University of Cambridge
Hannah Übler: University of Cambridge
Christina C. Williams: NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory
Chris Willott: NRC Herzberg

Nature, 2024, vol. 636, issue 8043, 594-597

Abstract: Abstract Recent observations have found a large number of supermassive black holes already in place in the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang, many of which seem to be overmassive relative to their host galaxy stellar mass when compared with local relation1–9. Several different models have been proposed to explain these findings, ranging from heavy seeds to light seeds experiencing bursts of high accretion rate10–16. Yet, current datasets are unable to differentiate between these various scenarios. Here we report the detection, from the JADES survey, of broad Hα emission in a galaxy at z = 6.68, which traces a black hole with a mass of about 4 × 108M⊙ and accreting at a rate of only 0.02 times the Eddington limit. The black hole to host galaxy stellar mass ratio is about 0.4—that is, about 1,000 times above the local relation—whereas the system is closer to the local relations in terms of dynamical mass and velocity dispersion of the host galaxy. This object is most likely an indication of a much larger population of dormant black holes around the epoch of reionization. Its properties are consistent with scenarios in which short bursts of super-Eddington accretion have resulted in black hole overgrowth and massive gas expulsion from the accretion disk; in between bursts, black holes spend most of their life in a dormant state.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08210-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:636:y:2024:i:8043:d:10.1038_s41586-024-08210-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08210-5

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().