Black hole mass and spin estimates of the most distant quasars

TL;DR

This study estimates the mass and spin of the most distant quasars using relativistic disk models, providing insights into black hole growth and evolution in the early universe.

Contribution

It introduces a method applying relativistic disk models to high-redshift quasars, yielding more precise black hole mass estimates and constraining their spin and accretion properties.

Findings

Black hole masses are consistent with virial estimates but with smaller uncertainties.

High black hole spins are ruled out, with an upper limit on spin values.

All sources are sub-Eddington, with lower Eddington ratios than previous studies.

Abstract

We investigate the properties of the most distant quasars ULASJ134208.10+092838.61 ($z = 7.54$), ULASJ112001.48+064124.3 ($z = 7.08$) and DELSJ003836.10-152723.6 ($z = 7.02$) studying their Optical-UV emission that shows clear evidence of the presence of an accretion disk. We model such emission applying the relativistic disk models KERRBB and SLIMBH for which we have derived some analytical approximations to describe the observed emission as a function of the black hole mass, accretion rate, spin and the viewing angle. We found that: 1] our black hole mass estimates are compatible with the ones found using the virial argument but with a smaller uncertainty; 2] assuming that the virial argument is a reliable method to have a black hole mass measurement (with no systematic uncertainties involved), we found an upper limit for the black hole spin of the three sources: very high spin values are ruled out; 3] our Eddington ratio estimates are smaller than those found in previous studies by a factor $\sim 2$: all sources are found to be sub-Eddington. Using our results, we explore the parameter space (efficiency, accretion rate) to describe the possible evolution of the black hole assuming a $\sim 10^{2-4} M_{\odot}$ seed: if the black hole in these sources formed at redshift $z = 10 - 20$, we found that the accretion has to proceed at the Eddington rate with a radiative efficiency $\eta \sim 0.1$ in order to reach the observed masses in less than $\sim 0.7$ Gyr.