EIGER. V. Characterizing the host galaxies of luminous quasars at z ≳ 6

Yue M, Eilers AC, Simcoe RA, Mackenzie R, Matthee JJ, Kashino D, Bordoloi R, Lilly SJ, Naidu RP. 2024. EIGER. V. Characterizing the host galaxies of luminous quasars at z ≳ 6. Astrophysical Journal. 966(2), 176.

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Author
Yue, Minghao; Eilers, Anna Christina; Simcoe, Robert A.; Mackenzie, Ruari; Matthee, Jorryt JISTA ; Kashino, Daichi; Bordoloi, Rongmon; Lilly, Simon J.; Naidu, Rohan P.
Department
Abstract
We report JWST/NIRCam measurements of quasar host galaxy emissions and supermassive black hole (SMBH) masses for six quasars at 5.9 < z < 7.1 in the Emission-line galaxies and Intergalactic Gas in the Epoch of Reionization (EIGER) project. We obtain deep NIRCam imaging in the F115W, F200W, and F356W bands, as well as F356W grism spectroscopy of the quasars. We use bright unsaturated stars to construct models of the point-spread functions (PSFs) and estimate the errors of these PSFs. We then measure or constrain the fluxes and morphology of the quasar host galaxies by fitting the quasar images as a point source plus an exponential disk. We successfully detect the host galaxies of three quasars, which have host-to-quasar-flux ratios of ∼1%–5%. Spectral energy distribution fitting suggests that these quasar host galaxies have stellar masses of M* ≳ 1010M⊙. For quasars with host galaxy nondetections, we estimate the upper limits of their stellar masses. We use the grism spectra to measure the Hβ line profile and the continuum luminosity, then estimate the SMBH masses for the quasars. Our results indicate that the positive relation between SMBH masses and host galaxy stellar masses already exists at redshift z ≳ 6. The quasars in our sample show a high BH-to-stellar-mass ratio of MBH/M* ∼ 0.15, which is about ∼2 dex higher than local relations. We find that selection effects only contribute partially to the high MBH/M* ratios of high-redshift quasars. This result hints at a possible redshift evolution of the MBH–M* relation.
Publishing Year
Date Published
2024-05-01
Journal Title
Astrophysical Journal
Acknowledgement
We thank the referee for the valuable comments on this paper. We thank John Silverman, Madeline Marshall, MingYang Zhuang, Weizhe Liu, and Jinyi Yang for inspiring discussions and suggestions. D.K. is grateful for the support from JSPS KAKENHI grant No. JP21K13956. This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. 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 NAS 5-03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with program ID #1243. Facility: JWST (NIRCam) Software: astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013, 2018), psfMC (Mechtley 2014), webbpsf (Perrin et al. 2014), jwst.
Volume
966
Issue
2
Article Number
176
ISSN
eISSN
IST-REx-ID

Cite this

Yue M, Eilers AC, Simcoe RA, et al. EIGER. V. Characterizing the host galaxies of luminous quasars at z ≳ 6. Astrophysical Journal. 2024;966(2). doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ad3914
Yue, M., Eilers, A. C., Simcoe, R. A., Mackenzie, R., Matthee, J. J., Kashino, D., … Naidu, R. P. (2024). EIGER. V. Characterizing the host galaxies of luminous quasars at z ≳ 6. Astrophysical Journal. IOP Publishing. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad3914
Yue, Minghao, Anna Christina Eilers, Robert A. Simcoe, Ruari Mackenzie, Jorryt J Matthee, Daichi Kashino, Rongmon Bordoloi, Simon J. Lilly, and Rohan P. Naidu. “EIGER. V. Characterizing the Host Galaxies of Luminous Quasars at z ≳ 6.” Astrophysical Journal. IOP Publishing, 2024. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad3914.
M. Yue et al., “EIGER. V. Characterizing the host galaxies of luminous quasars at z ≳ 6,” Astrophysical Journal, vol. 966, no. 2. IOP Publishing, 2024.
Yue M, Eilers AC, Simcoe RA, Mackenzie R, Matthee JJ, Kashino D, Bordoloi R, Lilly SJ, Naidu RP. 2024. EIGER. V. Characterizing the host galaxies of luminous quasars at z ≳ 6. Astrophysical Journal. 966(2), 176.
Yue, Minghao, et al. “EIGER. V. Characterizing the Host Galaxies of Luminous Quasars at z ≳ 6.” Astrophysical Journal, vol. 966, no. 2, 176, IOP Publishing, 2024, doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ad3914.
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