Detection of stellar light from quasar host galaxies at redshifts above 6

Xuheng Ding; Masafusa Onoue; John D Silverman; Yoshiki Matsuoka; Takuma Izumi; Michael A Strauss; Knud Jahnke; Camryn L Phillips; Junyao Li; Marta Volonteri; Zoltan Haiman; Irham Taufik Andika; Kentaro Aoki; Shunsuke Baba; Rebekka Bieri; Sarah E I Bosman; Connor Bottrell; Anna-Christina Eilers; Seiji Fujimoto; Melanie Habouzit; Masatoshi Imanishi; Kohei Inayoshi; Kazushi Iwasawa; Nobunari Kashikawa; Toshihiro Kawaguchi; Kotaro Kohno; Chien-Hsiu Lee; Alessandro Lupi; Jianwei Lyu; Tohru Nagao; Roderik Overzier; Jan-Torge Schindler; Malte Schramm; Kazuhiro Shimasaku; Yoshiki Toba; Benny Trakhtenbrot; Maxime Trebitsch; Tommaso Treu; Hideki Umehata; Bram P Venemans; Marianne Vestergaard; Fabian Walter; Feige Wang; Jinyi Yang

doi:10.1038/s41586-023-06345-5

Detection of stellar light from quasar host galaxies at redshifts above 6

Nature. 2023 Sep;621(7977):51-55. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06345-5. Epub 2023 Jun 28.

Authors

Xuheng Ding^{1

2}, Masafusa Onoue^{3

4

5}, John D Silverman^{6

7

8}, Yoshiki Matsuoka⁹, Takuma Izumi^{10

11}, Michael A Strauss¹², Knud Jahnke¹³, Camryn L Phillips¹², Junyao Li¹⁴, Marta Volonteri¹⁵, Zoltan Haiman^{16

17}, Irham Taufik Andika^{18

19}, Kentaro Aoki²⁰, Shunsuke Baba²¹, Rebekka Bieri²², Sarah E I Bosman¹³, Connor Bottrell^{6

7}, Anna-Christina Eilers²³, Seiji Fujimoto²⁴, Melanie Habouzit^{13

25}, Masatoshi Imanishi^{10

26}, Kohei Inayoshi²⁷, Kazushi Iwasawa^{28

29}, Nobunari Kashikawa^{8

30}, Toshihiro Kawaguchi³¹, Kotaro Kohno^{30

32}, Chien-Hsiu Lee³³, Alessandro Lupi³⁴, Jianwei Lyu³⁵, Tohru Nagao⁹, Roderik Overzier³⁶, Jan-Torge Schindler³⁷, Malte Schramm³⁸, Kazuhiro Shimasaku^{8

30}, Yoshiki Toba^{10

39}, Benny Trakhtenbrot⁴⁰, Maxime Trebitsch⁴¹, Tommaso Treu⁴², Hideki Umehata^{43

44}, Bram P Venemans³⁷, Marianne Vestergaard^{35

45}, Fabian Walter¹³, Feige Wang³⁵, Jinyi Yang³⁵

Affiliations

¹ Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU, WPI), The University of Tokyo, Chiba, Japan. xuheng.ding@ipmu.jp.
² Center for Data-Driven Discovery, Kavli IPMU (WPI), UTIAS, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan. xuheng.ding@ipmu.jp.
³ Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU, WPI), The University of Tokyo, Chiba, Japan. onoue@pku.edu.cn.
⁴ Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University, Beijing, China. onoue@pku.edu.cn.
⁵ Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany. onoue@pku.edu.cn.
⁶ Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU, WPI), The University of Tokyo, Chiba, Japan.
⁷ Center for Data-Driven Discovery, Kavli IPMU (WPI), UTIAS, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan.
⁸ Department of Astronomy, School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Japan.
⁹ Research Center for Space and Cosmic Evolution, Ehime University, Matsuyama, Japan.
¹⁰ National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Osawa, Mitaka, Japan.
¹¹ Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Hachioji, Japan.
¹² Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
¹³ Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany.
¹⁴ Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA.
¹⁵ Institute of Astrophysics of Paris, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France.
¹⁶ Department of Astronomy, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
¹⁷ Department of Physics, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
¹⁸ Physics Department, Technical University of München, Garching bei München, Germany.
¹⁹ Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Garching bei München, Germany.
²⁰ Subaru Telescope, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Hilo, HI, USA.
²¹ Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Kagoshima University, Kagoshima, Japan.
²² Institute for Computational Science, University of Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland.
²³ MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Cambridge, MA, USA.
²⁴ Department of Astronomy, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
²⁵ Centre for Astronomy at the University of Heidelberg (ITA), Heidelberg, Germany.
²⁶ Department of Astronomy, School of Science, Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI), Mitaka, Japan.
²⁷ Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University, Beijing, China.
²⁸ Institute of Sciences of the Cosmos (ICCUB), University of Barcelona (IEEC-UB), Barcelona, Spain.
²⁹ ICREA, Barcelona, Spain.
³⁰ Research Center for the Early Universe, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Japan.
³¹ Department of Economics, Management and Information Science, Onomichi City University, Onomichi, Japan.
³² Institute of Astronomy, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan.
³³ W. M. Keck Observatory, Kamuela, HI, USA.
³⁴ 'G. Occhialini' Physics Department, University of Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy.
³⁵ Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
³⁶ Observatoryl/MCTI, Rua General José Cristino, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
³⁷ Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
³⁸ University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany.
³⁹ Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Taipei, Taiwan.
⁴⁰ School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
⁴¹ Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
⁴² Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁴³ Institute for Advanced Research, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan.
⁴⁴ Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan.
⁴⁵ DARK, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen N, Denmark.

PMID: 37380029
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06345-5

Abstract

The detection of starlight from the host galaxies of quasars during the reionization epoch (z > 6) has been elusive, even with deep Hubble Space Telescope observations^1,2. The current highest redshift quasar host detected³, at z = 4.5, required the magnifying effect of a foreground lensing galaxy. Low-luminosity quasars^4-6 from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP)⁷ mitigate the challenge of detecting their underlying, previously undetected host galaxies. Here we report rest-frame optical images and spectroscopy of two HSC-SSP quasars at z > 6 with the JWST. Using near-infrared camera imaging at 3.6 and 1.5 μm and subtracting the light from the unresolved quasars, we find that the host galaxies are massive (stellar masses of 13 × and 3.4 × 10¹⁰ M_☉, respectively), compact and disc-like. Near-infrared spectroscopy at medium resolution shows stellar absorption lines in the more massive quasar, confirming the detection of the host. Velocity-broadened gas in the vicinity of these quasars enables measurements of their black hole masses (1.4 × 10⁹ and 2.0 × 10⁸ M_☉, respectively). Their location in the black hole mass-stellar mass plane is consistent with the distribution at low redshift, suggesting that the relation between black holes and their host galaxies was already in place less than a billion years after the Big Bang.