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What if young z>9 JWST galaxies hosted massive black holes?

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arxiv 2212.04710 v2 pith:WEDX3MU5 submitted 2022-12-09 astro-ph.GA astro-ph.HE

classification astro-ph.GAastro-ph.HE
keywords galaxiesmsunseedscandidatejwstmbhsmassiveonly
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abstract

JWST is discovering star forming `candidate' galaxies with photometric redshifts $z>9$ and little attenuation. We model presumptive massive black holes (MBHs) in such galaxies and find that their unobscured emission is fainter than the galaxy starlight in JWST filters, and difficult to be detected via color-color selection, and X-ray and radio observations. Only MBHs overmassive relative to expected galaxy scaling relations, accreting at high Eddington rates, would be detectable. Their discovery would point to the presence of heavy MBH seeds, but care is needed to exclude the existence of lighter seeds as only overmassive MBHs are detectable in this type of galaxies. Conversely, if no overmassive MBHs are hosted in these galaxies, either there are no heavy seeds or they are rare. The most massive/highest redshift candidate galaxies can attain stellar masses in excess of 5e10 Msun by z~6 if they grow along the SFR-mass sequence, and can nurse a MBH growing from ~1e5 Msun up to >3e7 Msun by z~6, to become hosts of some z>6 quasars. Candidate galaxies of log(M_{gal}/Msun)~8 can not grow their putative seeds fast, unless seeds are >1e6 Msun. The number density of the JWST candidate galaxies far outnumbers that of the highest-z quasar hosts and this allows for about only 1 bright z~6-7 quasar every 1000 of these galaxies.

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Cited by 3 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. A prevalent population of normal-mass central black holes in high-redshift massive galaxies

    astro-ph.GA 2025-02 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    A galaxy-based JWST search finds 13 broad-line AGNs in massive galaxies at z~3-5 with normal black hole-to-stellar mass ratios near the local value, indicating that overmassive black holes are not the only early pathway.

  2. BlackTHUNDER Reveals a Massive Filament around a Compact AGN at $z\simeq5.23$

    astro-ph.GA 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.5 of 10

    GN-77652, a compact broad-line AGN at z=5.229, lies beside a 12 kpc multi-source filament at the same redshift whose coalescence will erase the compact AGN appearance within ~150–440 Myr.

  3. An (in)complete NIRSpec census of Balmer absorption in Type 1 AGN -- radiation-driven outflows in little red dots, quasars and variable stars

    astro-ph.GA 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    About 44% of little red dots have hydrogen-alpha absorption from outflowing gas, implying radiatively driven outflows rather than static atmospheres.

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