UNCOVER: A NIRSpec Identification of a Broad-line AGN at z = 8.50

Abstract

Deep observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed an emerging population of red pointlike sources that could provide a link between the postulated supermassive black hole seeds and observed quasars. In this work, we present a JWST/NIRSpec spectrum from the JWST Cycle 1 UNCOVER Treasury survey of a massive accreting black hole at z = 8.50 displaying a clear broad-line component as inferred from the Hβ line with FWHM = 3439 ± 413 km s^-1, typical of the broad-line region of an active galactic nucleus (AGN). The AGN nature of this object is further supported by high ionization, as inferred from emission lines, and a point-source morphology. We compute a black hole mass of log_10(M_BH/M_⊙)=8.17± 0.42 and a bolometric luminosity of L_bol~6.6 × 10^45 erg s^-1. These values imply that our object is accreting at~40% of the Eddington limit. Detailed modeling of the spectral energy distribution in the optical and near-infrared, together with constraints from ALMA, indicate an upper limit on the stellar mass of log_10(M_* /M_⊙)<8.7 , which would lead to an unprecedented ratio of black hole to host mass of at least~30%. This is orders of magnitude higher compared to the local QSOs but consistent with recent AGN studies at high redshift with JWST. This finding suggests that a nonnegligible fraction of supermassive black holes either started out from massive seeds and/or grew at a super-Eddington rate at high redshift. Given the predicted number densities of high-z faint AGN, future NIRSpec observations of larger samples will allow us to further investigate galaxy-black hole coevolution in the early Universe.

Publication
The Astrophysical Journal Letters

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