The accretion of quasars at the epoch of reionisation: $JWST$ catches the primeval monsters slowly feasting
B. Trefoloni, E. Nardini, S. Carniani, E. Lusso, A. Marconi, E. Parlanti, A. Sacchi, A. Shlentsova, M. Signorini, G. Risaliti, S. Zamora

TL;DR
This study uses JWST/NIRSpec data to measure black hole growth in high-redshift quasars, revealing predominantly sub-Eddington accretion rates and demonstrating the effectiveness of advanced accretion disk models for early universe SMBH studies.
Contribution
It introduces a robust method for measuring SMBH properties in high-redshift quasars using JWST, reducing uncertainties compared to traditional single-epoch estimates.
Findings
Average Eddington ratio of -0.9 with low dispersion.
Less than 0.2% of quasars accrete above the Eddington limit.
JWST effectively tests accretion disk models at high redshift.
Abstract
Quasars (QSOs) emit an enormous amount of light as a result of the accretion of gas onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Thanks to their luminosity, the most distant known QSOs allow us to trace the growth of SMBHs deep into the epoch of reionisation. In this work, we employed /NIRSpec observations of eight luminous (log45.7) QSOs at 5.9 to constrain their accretion properties, namely black hole mass, accretion disc (AD) luminosity, and Eddington ratio (, , ), by fitting the rest-frame UV and optical emission with different AD models. This method provided self-consistent measurements of both and . The uncertainties on and , obtained within the AD-modelling framework (0.2 dex; 0.1 dex), are significantly smaller than…
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Taxonomy
TopicsGalaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena · Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations · Astronomy and Astrophysical Research
