Joining the dots: high redshift black holes

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, vol. 536, pp. L1–L3

Abstract

ABSTRACT A recent paper suggested that emission from the central supermassive black holes in high-redshift galaxies must be tightly collimated by the effects of partly expelling a super-Eddington mass supply. I show here that this idea predicts that these galaxies should produce very little detectable rest-frame X-ray emission, appear Compton thick, and show no easily detectable sign of outflows. All of these properties agree with current observations. To produce these effects, the mass supply to the black holes should exceed the Eddington rate by factors ${\sim} 50{\!-\!}100$, which appears in line with conditions during the early growth of the holes. I note that theoretical derivations of the ratio of black hole mass to host galaxy stellar mass already predict that this should increase significantly at high redshift, in line with recent observations.

Authors 1

1. Andrew R. King corresponding Aachen Leiden Observatory

   Leiden University · University of Amsterdam · University of Leicester · Leiden Observatory

   Affiliation as printed

   Astronomical Institute Anton Pannekoek, University of Amsterdam , Science Park 904, NL-1098 XH Amsterdam ,

   Leiden Observatory, Leiden University , Niels Bohrweg 2, NL-2333 CA Leiden ,

   School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Leicester , Leicester LE1 7RH ,

   School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Leicester , Leicester LE1 7RH ,