Kavli Affiliate: John D. Silverman
| First 5 Authors: Junyao Li, John D. Silverman, Yue Shen, Marta Volonteri, Knud Jahnke
| Summary:
JWST is revealing a new remarkable population of high-redshift ($zgtrsim4$),
low-luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) in deep surveys and detecting the
host galaxy stellar light in the most luminous and massive quasars at $zsim 6$
for the first time. Latest results claim supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in
these systems to be significantly more massive than expected from the local BH
mass – stellar mass ($mathcal{M}_{rm BH} – mathcal{M}_star$) relation and
that this is not due to sample selection effects. Through detailed statistical
modeling, we demonstrate that the coupled effects of selection biases (i.e.,
finite detection limit and requirements on detecting broad lines) and
measurement uncertainties in $mathcal{M}_{rm BH}$ and $mathcal{M}_star$ can
in fact largely account for the reported offset and flattening in the observed
$mathcal{M}_{rm BH} – mathcal{M}_star$ relation toward the upper envelope
of the local relation, even for those at $mathcal{M}_{rm BH} <
10^8,M_{odot}$. We further investigate the possible evolution of the
$mathcal{M}_{rm BH} – mathcal{M}_star$ relation at $zgtrsim 4$ with
careful treatment of observational biases and consideration of the degeneracy
between intrinsic evolution and dispersion in this relation. The bias-corrected
intrinsic $mathcal{M}_{rm BH} – mathcal{M}_star$ relation in the low-mass
regime suggests that there might be a large population of low-mass BHs (${rm
log},mathcal{M}_{rm BH} lesssim 5$), possibly originating from lighter
seeds, remaining undetected or unidentified even in the deepest JWST surveys.
These results have important consequences for JWST studies of BH seeding and
the coevolution between SMBHs and their host galaxies at the earliest cosmic
times.
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