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SHELLQs-JWST Perspective on the Intrinsic Mass Relation between Supermassive Black Holes and Their Host Galaxies at z < 6

John David Silverman, Junyao Li, Xuheng Ding, Masafusa Onoue, Michael A. Strauss, Yoshiki Matsuoka, Takuma Izumi, Knud Jahnke, Tommaso Treu, Marta Volonteri, Camryn L. Phillips, Irham T. Andika, Kentaro Aoki, Junya Arita, Shunsuke Baba, Sarah E. I. Bosman, Anna-Christina Eilers, Xiaohui Fan, Seiji Fujimoto, Melanie HabouzitZoltan Haiman, Masatoshi Imanishi, Kohei Inayoshi, Kazushi Iwasawa, Nobunari Kashikawa, Toshihiro Kawaguchi, Chien-Hsiu Lee, Alessandro Lupi, Tohru Nagao, Jan-Torge Schindler, Malte Schramm, Kazuhiro Shimasaku, Yoshiki Toba, Benny Trakhtenbrot, Hideki Umehata, Marianne Vestergaard, Fabian Walter, Feige Wang, Jinyi Yang

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Abstract

The relation between the masses of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their host galaxies encodes information on their mode of growth, especially at the earliest epochs. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has opened such investigations by detecting the host galaxies of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and more luminous quasars within the first billion years of the Universe (z greater than or similar to 6). Here, we evaluate the relation between the mass of SMBHs and the total stellar mass of their host galaxies using a sample of nine quasars at 6.18 <= z <= 6.4 from the Subaru High-z Exploration of Low-luminosity Quasars survey with NIRCam and NIRSpec observations. We find that the observed location of these quasars in the SMBH-galaxy mass plane (logM(BH)/M-circle dot similar to 8 -9; logM(*)/M-circle dot similar to 9.5 -11) is consistent with a nonevolving intrinsic mass relation with dispersion (0.80(-0.28)(+0.23) dex) higher than the local value (similar to 0.3-0.4 dex) of their more massive descendants. Our analysis is based on a forward model of systematics and includes a consideration of the impact of selection effects and measurement uncertainties with an assumption on the slope of the mass relation. While degeneracies between parameters persist, the best-fit solution has a reasonable AGN fraction (2.3%) of galaxies at z similar to 6 with an actively growing UV-unobscured black hole. In particular, models with a substantially higher normalisation in M-BH would require an unrealistically low intrinsic dispersion (similar to 0.22 dex). Consequently, our results predict a large population of AGN at lower black hole masses, as are now just starting to be discovered in focused efforts with JWST.
Original languageEnglish
Article numberL67
JournalAstrophysical Journal Letters
Volume995
Issue number2
Number of pages10
ISSN2041-8205
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 20 Dec 2025

Keywords

  • High-z exploration
  • Active galactic nuclei
  • M-star relation
  • Similar-to 2
  • M-bh
  • Cosmological simulations
  • Luminous galaxies
  • Scaling relations
  • Stellar-mass
  • Quasar-host

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