A Census of Photometrically Selected Little Red Dots at 4 < z < 9 in JWST Blank Fields
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| Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Formato: | Preprint |
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2024
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| author | Kokorev, Vasily Caputi, Karina I. Greene, Jenny E. Dayal, Pratika Trebitsch, Maxime Cutler, Sam E. Fujimoto, Seiji Labbé, Ivo Miller, Tim B. Iani, Edoardo Navarro-Carrera, Rafael Rinaldi, Pierluigi |
| author_facet | Kokorev, Vasily Caputi, Karina I. Greene, Jenny E. Dayal, Pratika Trebitsch, Maxime Cutler, Sam E. Fujimoto, Seiji Labbé, Ivo Miller, Tim B. Iani, Edoardo Navarro-Carrera, Rafael Rinaldi, Pierluigi |
| contents | Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have uncovered numerous faint active galactic nuclei (AGN) at $z\sim5$ and beyond. These objects are key to our understanding of the formation of supermassive black holes (SMBHs), their co-evolution with host galaxies, as well as the role of AGN in cosmic reionization. Using photometric colors and size measurements, we perform a search for compact red objects in an array of blank deep JWST/NIRCam fields totaling $\sim640$ arcmin$^{2}$. Our careful selection yields 260 reddened AGN candidates at $4<z_{\rm phot}<9$, dominated by a point-source like central component ($\langle r_{\rm eff} \rangle <130$ pc) and displaying a dichotomy in their rest-frame colors (blue UV and red optical slopes). Quasar model fitting reveals our objects to be moderately dust extincted ($A_{\rm V}\sim1.6$), which is reflected in their inferred bolometric luminosities of $L_{\rm bol}$ = 10$^{44-47}$ erg/s, and fainter UV magnitudes $M_{\rm UV} \simeq$ $-17$ to $-22$. Thanks to the large areas explored, we extend the existing dusty AGN luminosity functions to both fainter and brighter magnitudes, estimating their number densities to be $\times100$ higher than for UV-selected quasars of similar magnitudes. At the same time they constitute only a small fraction of all UV-selected galaxies at similar redshifts, but this percentage rises to $\sim$10\% for $M_{UV}\sim -22$ at $z\sim7$. Finally, assuming a conservative case of accretion at the Eddington rate, we place a lower limit on the SMBH mass function at $z\sim5$, finding it to be consistent with both theory and previous JWST observations. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_09981 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | A Census of Photometrically Selected Little Red Dots at 4 < z < 9 in JWST Blank Fields Kokorev, Vasily Caputi, Karina I. Greene, Jenny E. Dayal, Pratika Trebitsch, Maxime Cutler, Sam E. Fujimoto, Seiji Labbé, Ivo Miller, Tim B. Iani, Edoardo Navarro-Carrera, Rafael Rinaldi, Pierluigi Astrophysics of Galaxies Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have uncovered numerous faint active galactic nuclei (AGN) at $z\sim5$ and beyond. These objects are key to our understanding of the formation of supermassive black holes (SMBHs), their co-evolution with host galaxies, as well as the role of AGN in cosmic reionization. Using photometric colors and size measurements, we perform a search for compact red objects in an array of blank deep JWST/NIRCam fields totaling $\sim640$ arcmin$^{2}$. Our careful selection yields 260 reddened AGN candidates at $4<z_{\rm phot}<9$, dominated by a point-source like central component ($\langle r_{\rm eff} \rangle <130$ pc) and displaying a dichotomy in their rest-frame colors (blue UV and red optical slopes). Quasar model fitting reveals our objects to be moderately dust extincted ($A_{\rm V}\sim1.6$), which is reflected in their inferred bolometric luminosities of $L_{\rm bol}$ = 10$^{44-47}$ erg/s, and fainter UV magnitudes $M_{\rm UV} \simeq$ $-17$ to $-22$. Thanks to the large areas explored, we extend the existing dusty AGN luminosity functions to both fainter and brighter magnitudes, estimating their number densities to be $\times100$ higher than for UV-selected quasars of similar magnitudes. At the same time they constitute only a small fraction of all UV-selected galaxies at similar redshifts, but this percentage rises to $\sim$10\% for $M_{UV}\sim -22$ at $z\sim7$. Finally, assuming a conservative case of accretion at the Eddington rate, we place a lower limit on the SMBH mass function at $z\sim5$, finding it to be consistent with both theory and previous JWST observations. |
| title | A Census of Photometrically Selected Little Red Dots at 4 < z < 9 in JWST Blank Fields |
| topic | Astrophysics of Galaxies |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.09981 |