Detecting and Characterizing Young Quasars II: Four Quasars at $z\sim 6$ with Lifetimes $<10^4$ years

TL;DR

This study estimates the UV luminous lifetimes of high-redshift quasars, identifying some with extremely short lifetimes under 10^4 years, which provides insights into quasar activity timescales and SMBH growth.

Contribution

It provides precise lifetime measurements of high-redshift quasars, revealing a subset with very short active phases, and compares these to the broader quasar population.

Findings

Four quasars have lifetimes less than 10^4 years.

Most quasars have longer lifetimes around 10^5 to 10^6 years.

Young quasars are less than 10% of the population.

Abstract

The extents of proximity zones of high-redshift quasars enable constraints on the timescales of quasar activity, which are fundamental for understanding the growth of the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) that power the quasars' emission. In this study, we obtain precise estimates for the ultraviolet (UV) luminous lifetimes of ten quasars at $5.8< z< 6.5$. These objects were pre-selected to have short lifetimes based on preliminary measurements of their proximity zone sizes, and were then targeted for high quality follow-up sub-mm, optical, and infrared observations required to increase the measurements' precision and securely determine their lifetimes. By comparing these proximity zone sizes to mock quasar spectra generated from radiative transfer simulations at a range of different lifetimes, we deduce extremely short lifetimes $t_{\rm Q}<10^4$ yr for four objects in our sample, whereas the remaining quasars are consistent with longer lifetimes of $t_{\rm Q}\gtrsim 10^5$ yr. These young objects with small proximity zones represent $\lesssim10\%$ of the quasar population as a whole. We compare our results in detail to other studies on timescales of quasar activity, which point towards an average lifetime of $t_{\rm Q}\sim10^6$ yr for the quasar population. This is consistent with finding newly turned on quasars approximately $\sim 1-10\%$ of the time. These young quasars represent an unique opportunity to study triggering and feedback mechanisms of SMBHs, since the onset of their UV luminous quasar phase happened only recently, and therefore traces of this process might still be observable.