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Uncovering a Massive z∼7.7 Galaxy Hosting a Heavily Obscured Radio-loud Active Galactic Nucleus Candidate in COSMOS-Web

  • Erini Lambrides*
  • , Marco Chiaberge
  • , Arianna S. Long
  • , Daizhong Liu
  • , Hollis B. Akins
  • , Andrew F. Ptak
  • , Irham Taufik Andika
  • , Alessandro Capetti
  • , Caitlin M. Casey
  • , Jaclyn B. Champagne
  • , Katherine Chworowsky
  • , Tracy E. Clarke
  • , Olivia R. Cooper
  • , Xuheng Ding
  • , Dillon Z. Dong
  • , Andreas L. Faisst
  • , Jordan Y. Forman
  • , Maximilien Franco
  • , Steven Gillman
  • , Ghassem Gozaliasl
  • Kirsten R. Hall, Santosh Harish, Christopher C. Hayward, Michaela Hirschmann, Taylor A. Hutchison, Knud Jahnke, Shuowen Jin, Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe, Emma T. Kleiner, Anton M. Koekemoer, Vasily Kokorev, Sinclaire M. Manning, Crystal L. Martin, Jed McKinney, Colin Norman, Kristina Nyland, Masafusa Onoue, Brant E. Robertson, Marko Shuntov, John D. Silverman, Massimo Stiavelli, Benny Trakhtenbrot, Eleni Vardoulaki, Jorge A. Zavala, Natalie Allen, Olivier Ilbert, Henry Joy McCracken, Louise Paquereau, Jason Rhodes, Sune Toft
*Corresponding author for this work
  • NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
  • Johns Hopkins University
  • University of Texas at Austin
  • Technical University of Munich
  • National Institute for Astrophysics
  • University of Arizona
  • Naval Research Laboratory
  • The University of Tokyo
  • National Radio Astronomy Observatory
  • California Institute of Technology
  • Aalto University
  • Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
  • Rochester Institute of Technology
  • Simons Foundation
  • Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne
  • Max Planck Institute for Astronomy
  • University of Groningen
  • University of Massachusetts
  • University of California at Santa Barbara
  • University of California at Santa Cruz
  • University of Copenhagen
  • Tel Aviv University
  • Karl Schwarzschild Observatory
  • National Institutes of Natural Sciences - National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
  • CNRS
  • Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris
  • Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics
  • Space Telescope Science Institute

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Abstract

In this Letter, we report the discovery of the highest redshift, heavily obscured, radio-loud (RL) active galactic nucleus (AGN) candidate selected using JWST NIRCam/MIRI, mid-IR, submillimeter, and radio imaging in the COSMOS-Web field. Using multifrequency radio observations and mid-IR photometry, we identify a powerful, RL, growing supermassive black hole with significant spectral steepening of the radio spectral energy distribution (f1.28 GHz ∼ 2 mJy, q24 μm = −1.1, α1.28−3 GHz = − 1.2, Δα = − 0.4). In conjunction with ALMA, deep ground-based observations, ancillary space-based data, and the unprecedented resolution and sensitivity of JWST, we find no evidence of AGN contribution to the UV/optical/near-infrared (NIR) data and thus infer heavy amounts of obscuration (NH > 1023 cm−2). Using the wealth of deep UV to submillimeter photometric data, we report a singular solution photo-z of zphot = 7.7-+0.30.4 and estimate an extremely massive host galaxy (log M* = 11.92 0.5M) hosting a powerful, growing supermassive black hole (LBol = 4−12x × 1046 erg s−1). This source represents the farthest known obscured RL AGN candidate, and its level of obscuration aligns with the most representative but observationally scarce population of AGN at these epochs.

Original languageEnglish
Article numberL25
JournalAstrophysical Journal Letters
Volume961
Issue number1
Number of pages9
ISSN2041-8205
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024

Keywords

  • Active galactic nuclei (16)
  • High-redshift galaxies (734)
  • Radio loud quasars (1349)
  • Reionization (1383)
  • Supermassive black holes (1663)
  • Unified Astronomy Thesaurus concepts: Quasars (1319)

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