SHELLQs–JWST perspective on the intrinsic mass relation between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies at z > 6
Silverman JD, Li J, Ding X, Onoue M, Strauss MA, Matsuoka Y, Izumi T, Jahnke K, Treu T, Volonteri M, Phillips CL, Andika IT, Aoki K, Arita J, Baba S, Bosman SEI, Eilers A-C, Fan X, Fujimoto S, Habouzit M, Haiman Z, Imanishi M, Inayoshi K, Iwasawa K, Kashikawa N, Kawaguchi T, Lee C-H, Lupi A, Nagao T, Schindler J-T, Schramm M, Shimasaku K, Toba Y, Trakhtenbrot B, Umehata H, Vestergaard M, Walter F, Wang F, Yang J. 2025. SHELLQs–JWST perspective on the intrinsic mass relation between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies at z > 6. The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 995(2), L67.
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Author
Silverman, John David;
Li, Junyao;
Ding, Xuheng;
Onoue, Masafusa;
Strauss, Michael A.;
Matsuoka, Yoshiki;
Izumi, Takuma;
Jahnke, Knud;
Treu, Tommaso;
Volonteri, Marta;
Phillips, Camryn L.;
Andika, Irham T.
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All
Department
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 ≳ 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 (logMBH/M 8–9; logM*/M 9.5–11) is consistent with a nonevolving intrinsic mass relation with dispersion (0.80 +0.23 -0.28 dex) higher than the local value (∼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 ∼ 6 with an actively growing UV-unobscured black hole. In particular, models with a substantially higher normalisation in MBH would require an unrealistically low intrinsic dispersion (∼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.
Publishing Year
Date Published
2025-12-17
Journal Title
The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Acknowledgement
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 programs GO #1967 and GO #3859. The specific observations analyzed can be accessed via DOI: 10.17909/719q-cn32. Support for these programs 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 NAS 5-03127. This work was supported by World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI), MEXT, Japan. This work used computing resources at Kavli IPMU. J.S. is supported by JSPS KAKENHI (JP22H01262). M.O. is supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI grant No. 24K22894. Y.M. was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI grant No. 21H04494. M.V. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Independent Research Fund Denmark via grant numbers DFF 8021-00130 and 3103-00146 and from the Carlsberg Foundation via grant CF23-0417. S.E.I.B. is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under Emmy Noether grant number BO 5771/1-1. K.I. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12073003, 11721303, 11991052). K.I. acknowledges support under the grant PID2022-136827NB-C44 provided by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 / FEDER, UE. A.L. acknowledges support from PRIN MUR 2022— Project “2022935STW.” J.T.S. is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation)—project number 518006966. F.W. acknowledges support from NSF award AST-2513040. M.H. acknowledges support from the FNS under the SNSF starting grant 218032. B.T. acknowledges support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement number 950533) and from the Excellence Cluster ORIGINS, which is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy—EXC 2094—390783311.
Volume
995
Issue
2
Article Number
L67
ISSN
eISSN
IST-REx-ID
Cite this
Silverman JD, Li J, Ding X, et al. SHELLQs–JWST perspective on the intrinsic mass relation between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies at z > 6. The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 2025;995(2). doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ae279c
Silverman, J. D., Li, J., Ding, X., Onoue, M., Strauss, M. A., Matsuoka, Y., … Yang, J. (2025). SHELLQs–JWST perspective on the intrinsic mass relation between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies at z > 6. The Astrophysical Journal Letters. IOP Publishing. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae279c
Silverman, John David, Junyao Li, Xuheng Ding, Masafusa Onoue, Michael A. Strauss, Yoshiki Matsuoka, Takuma Izumi, et al. “SHELLQs–JWST Perspective on the Intrinsic Mass Relation between Supermassive Black Holes and Their Host Galaxies at z > 6.” The Astrophysical Journal Letters. IOP Publishing, 2025. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae279c.
J. D. Silverman et al., “SHELLQs–JWST perspective on the intrinsic mass relation between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies at z > 6,” The Astrophysical Journal Letters, vol. 995, no. 2. IOP Publishing, 2025.
Silverman JD, Li J, Ding X, Onoue M, Strauss MA, Matsuoka Y, Izumi T, Jahnke K, Treu T, Volonteri M, Phillips CL, Andika IT, Aoki K, Arita J, Baba S, Bosman SEI, Eilers A-C, Fan X, Fujimoto S, Habouzit M, Haiman Z, Imanishi M, Inayoshi K, Iwasawa K, Kashikawa N, Kawaguchi T, Lee C-H, Lupi A, Nagao T, Schindler J-T, Schramm M, Shimasaku K, Toba Y, Trakhtenbrot B, Umehata H, Vestergaard M, Walter F, Wang F, Yang J. 2025. SHELLQs–JWST perspective on the intrinsic mass relation between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies at z > 6. The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 995(2), L67.
Silverman, John David, et al. “SHELLQs–JWST Perspective on the Intrinsic Mass Relation between Supermassive Black Holes and Their Host Galaxies at z > 6.” The Astrophysical Journal Letters, vol. 995, no. 2, L67, IOP Publishing, 2025, doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ae279c.
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