Abstract
The detection of starlight from the host galaxies of quasars during the reionization epoch (z > 6) has been elusive, even with deep Hubble Space Telescope observations 1,2. The current highest redshift quasar host detected 3, at z = 4.5, required the magnifying effect of a foreground lensing galaxy. Low-luminosity quasars 4–6 from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP) 7 mitigate the challenge of detecting their underlying, previously undetected host galaxies. Here we report rest-frame optical images and spectroscopy of two HSC-SSP quasars at z > 6 with the JWST. Using near-infrared camera imaging at 3.6 and 1.5 μm and subtracting the light from the unresolved quasars, we find that the host galaxies are massive (stellar masses of 13 × and 3.4 × 1010 M ☉, respectively), compact and disc-like. Near-infrared spectroscopy at medium resolution shows stellar absorption lines in the more massive quasar, confirming the detection of the host. Velocity-broadened gas in the vicinity of these quasars enables measurements of their black hole masses (1.4 × 109 and 2.0 × 108 M ☉, respectively). Their location in the black hole mass–stellar mass plane is consistent with the distribution at low redshift, suggesting that the relation between black holes and their host galaxies was already in place less than a billion years after the Big Bang.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 51-55 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Nature |
Volume | 621 |
Issue number | 7977 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 7 2023 |
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- General
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In: Nature, Vol. 621, No. 7977, 07.09.2023, p. 51-55.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
TY - JOUR
T1 - Detection of stellar light from quasar host galaxies at redshifts above 6
AU - Ding, Xuheng
AU - Onoue, Masafusa
AU - Silverman, John D.
AU - Matsuoka, Yoshiki
AU - Izumi, Takuma
AU - Strauss, Michael A.
AU - Jahnke, Knud
AU - Phillips, Camryn L.
AU - Li, Junyao
AU - Volonteri, Marta
AU - Haiman, Zoltan
AU - Andika, Irham Taufik
AU - Aoki, Kentaro
AU - Baba, Shunsuke
AU - Bieri, Rebekka
AU - Bosman, Sarah E.I.
AU - Bottrell, Connor
AU - Eilers, Anna Christina
AU - Fujimoto, Seiji
AU - Habouzit, Melanie
AU - Imanishi, Masatoshi
AU - Inayoshi, Kohei
AU - Iwasawa, Kazushi
AU - Kashikawa, Nobunari
AU - Kawaguchi, Toshihiro
AU - Kohno, Kotaro
AU - Lee, Chien Hsiu
AU - Lupi, Alessandro
AU - Lyu, Jianwei
AU - Nagao, Tohru
AU - Overzier, Roderik
AU - Schindler, Jan Torge
AU - Schramm, Malte
AU - Shimasaku, Kazuhiro
AU - Toba, Yoshiki
AU - Trakhtenbrot, Benny
AU - Trebitsch, Maxime
AU - Treu, Tommaso
AU - Umehata, Hideki
AU - Venemans, Bram P.
AU - Vestergaard, Marianne
AU - Walter, Fabian
AU - Wang, Feige
AU - Yang, Jinyi
N1 - Funding Information: We thank T. Morishita and L. Yang for help with the gsf and Bagpipes packages. We thank Y. Fu for his help on the use of QSOFitMORE. We thank X. Fan, L. Ho and V. Bennert for useful discussions. This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA JWST. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract no. NAS 5-03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with programme no. 1967. Support for programme no. 1967 was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract no. NAS 5-03127. This paper is based on data collected at the Subaru Telescope and retrieved from the HSC data archive system, which is operated by the Subaru Telescope and Astronomy Data Center at NAOJ. Data analysis was in part carried out with the cooperation of the Center for Computational Astrophysics (CfCA), NAOJ. We are honoured and grateful for the opportunity of observing the Universe from Maunakea, which has cultural, historical and natural significance in Hawaii. This work was supported by World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI), MEXT, Japan. X.D., J.S., Y.M., T.I., K.K. and H.U. are supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI grant nos. JP22K14071, JP18H01251, JP22H01262, JP17H04830, JP21H04494, JP20K14531, JP17H06130 and JP20H01953. F.W., S.E.I.B., B.T., J.T.S. and M.O. acknowledge support from the European Research Council (ERC) grant nos. 740246, 885301 and 950533. M.O. and K.I. acknowledge support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China grant nos. 12150410307 and 12073003. Y.M. acknowledges support from the Mitsubishi Foundation grant no. 30140. S.F. acknowledges support from NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant no. HST-HF2-51505.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract no. NAS 5-26555. Z.H. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation grant no. AST-2006176. K.I. acknowledges support by the Spanish MCIN under grant no. PID2019-105510GB-C33/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. A.L. acknowledges funding from MIUR under the grant no. PRIN 2017-MB8AEZ. B.T. acknowledges support from the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 1849/19) and from the ERC under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 950533). M.T. acknowledges support from the NWO grant no. 0.16.VIDI.189.162 (‘ODIN’). M.V. acknowledges support from the Independent Research Fund Denmark by grant no. DFF 8021-00130. Funding Information: We thank T. Morishita and L. Yang for help with the gsf and Bagpipes packages. We thank Y. Fu for his help on the use of QSOFitMORE. We thank X. Fan, L. Ho and V. Bennert for useful discussions. This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA JWST. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract no. NAS 5-03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with programme no. 1967. Support for programme no. 1967 was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract no. NAS 5-03127. This paper is based on data collected at the Subaru Telescope and retrieved from the HSC data archive system, which is operated by the Subaru Telescope and Astronomy Data Center at NAOJ. Data analysis was in part carried out with the cooperation of the Center for Computational Astrophysics (CfCA), NAOJ. We are honoured and grateful for the opportunity of observing the Universe from Maunakea, which has cultural, historical and natural significance in Hawaii. This work was supported by World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI), MEXT, Japan. X.D., J.S., Y.M., T.I., K.K. and H.U. are supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI grant nos. JP22K14071, JP18H01251, JP22H01262, JP17H04830, JP21H04494, JP20K14531, JP17H06130 and JP20H01953. F.W., S.E.I.B., B.T., J.T.S. and M.O. acknowledge support from the European Research Council (ERC) grant nos. 740246, 885301 and 950533. M.O. and K.I. acknowledge support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China grant nos. 12150410307 and 12073003. Y.M. acknowledges support from the Mitsubishi Foundation grant no. 30140. S.F. acknowledges support from NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant no. HST-HF2-51505.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract no. NAS 5-26555. Z.H. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation grant no. AST-2006176. K.I. acknowledges support by the Spanish MCIN under grant no. PID2019-105510GB-C33/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. A.L. acknowledges funding from MIUR under the grant no. PRIN 2017-MB8AEZ. B.T. acknowledges support from the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 1849/19) and from the ERC under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 950533). M.T. acknowledges support from the NWO grant no. 0.16.VIDI.189.162 (‘ODIN’). M.V. acknowledges support from the Independent Research Fund Denmark by grant no. DFF 8021-00130. Publisher Copyright: © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
PY - 2023/9/7
Y1 - 2023/9/7
N2 - The detection of starlight from the host galaxies of quasars during the reionization epoch (z > 6) has been elusive, even with deep Hubble Space Telescope observations 1,2. The current highest redshift quasar host detected 3, at z = 4.5, required the magnifying effect of a foreground lensing galaxy. Low-luminosity quasars 4–6 from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP) 7 mitigate the challenge of detecting their underlying, previously undetected host galaxies. Here we report rest-frame optical images and spectroscopy of two HSC-SSP quasars at z > 6 with the JWST. Using near-infrared camera imaging at 3.6 and 1.5 μm and subtracting the light from the unresolved quasars, we find that the host galaxies are massive (stellar masses of 13 × and 3.4 × 1010 M ☉, respectively), compact and disc-like. Near-infrared spectroscopy at medium resolution shows stellar absorption lines in the more massive quasar, confirming the detection of the host. Velocity-broadened gas in the vicinity of these quasars enables measurements of their black hole masses (1.4 × 109 and 2.0 × 108 M ☉, respectively). Their location in the black hole mass–stellar mass plane is consistent with the distribution at low redshift, suggesting that the relation between black holes and their host galaxies was already in place less than a billion years after the Big Bang.
AB - The detection of starlight from the host galaxies of quasars during the reionization epoch (z > 6) has been elusive, even with deep Hubble Space Telescope observations 1,2. The current highest redshift quasar host detected 3, at z = 4.5, required the magnifying effect of a foreground lensing galaxy. Low-luminosity quasars 4–6 from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP) 7 mitigate the challenge of detecting their underlying, previously undetected host galaxies. Here we report rest-frame optical images and spectroscopy of two HSC-SSP quasars at z > 6 with the JWST. Using near-infrared camera imaging at 3.6 and 1.5 μm and subtracting the light from the unresolved quasars, we find that the host galaxies are massive (stellar masses of 13 × and 3.4 × 1010 M ☉, respectively), compact and disc-like. Near-infrared spectroscopy at medium resolution shows stellar absorption lines in the more massive quasar, confirming the detection of the host. Velocity-broadened gas in the vicinity of these quasars enables measurements of their black hole masses (1.4 × 109 and 2.0 × 108 M ☉, respectively). Their location in the black hole mass–stellar mass plane is consistent with the distribution at low redshift, suggesting that the relation between black holes and their host galaxies was already in place less than a billion years after the Big Bang.
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UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85165379991&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41586-023-06345-5
DO - 10.1038/s41586-023-06345-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 37380029
AN - SCOPUS:85165379991
SN - 0028-0836
VL - 621
SP - 51
EP - 55
JO - Nature
JF - Nature
IS - 7977
ER -