# Gamma-ray Blazars Within the First 2 Billion Years

## TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of five high-redshift gamma-ray blazars beyond z=3.1, including the most distant known at z=4.31, providing insights into early black hole growth and blazar evolution.

## Contribution

First detection of gamma-ray emitting blazars beyond z=3.1 with detailed spectral analysis, revealing their extreme properties and implications for black hole growth in the early Universe.

## Key findings

- Discovered five gamma-ray blazars beyond z=3.1, including the most distant at z=4.31.
- These blazars have steep gamma-ray spectra and large Compton dominance.
- Black holes in these blazars are estimated to be 10^8-10^10 solar masses.

## Abstract

The detection of high-redshift ($z>$3) blazars enables the study of the evolution of the most luminous relativistic jets over cosmic time. More importantly, high-redshift blazars tend to host massive black holes and can be used to constrain the space density of heavy black holes in the early Universe. Here, we report the first detection with the \fermi-Large Area Telescope of five \gm-ray emitting blazars beyond $z=3.1$, more distant than any blazars previously detected in $\gamma$-rays. Among these five objects, NVSS J151002+570243 is now the most distant known \gm-ray emitting blazar at $z=4.31$. These objects have steeply falling \gm-ray spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and, those that have been observed in X-rays, a very hard X-ray spectrum, both typical of powerful blazars. Their Compton dominance (ratio of the inverse Compton to synchrotron peak luminosities) is also very large ($>20$). All of these properties place these objects among the most extreme members of the blazar population. Their optical spectra and the modeling of their optical-UV SEDs confirm that these objects harbor massive black holes ($M_{\rm BH} \sim 10^{8-10} {\rm M}_{\odot}$). We find that, at $z\approx4$, the space density of $>10^{9} {\rm M}_{\odot}$ black holes hosted in radio-loud and radio-quiet active galactic nuclei are similar, implying that radio-loudness may play a key role in rapid black hole growth in the early Universe.