The detection of starlight from the host galaxies of quasars during the reionization epoch (z > 6) has been elusive, even with deep HST observations1,2. The current highest redshift quasar host detected3, at z = 4.5, required the magnifying effect of a foreground lensing galaxy. Low-luminosity quasars4,5,6 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 JWST. Using NIRCam imaging at 3.6μm and 1.5μm 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 disk-like. NIRSpec medium-resolution spectroscopy 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.
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Automatic Machine Learning Framework to Study Morphological Parameters of AGN Host Galaxies within z < 1.4 in the Hyper Supreme-Cam Wide Survey
Abstract We present a composite machine learning framework to estimate posterior probability distributions of bulge-to-total light ratio, half-light radius, and flux for active galactic nucleus (AGN) host galaxies withinz < 1.4 andm < 23 in the Hyper Supreme-Cam (HSC) Wide survey. We divide the data into five redshift bins:low(0 < z < 0.25),mid(0.25 < z < 0.5),high(0.5 < z < 0.9),extra(0.9 < z < 1.1), andextreme(1.1 < z < 1.4), and train our models independently in each bin. We use PSFGAN to decompose the AGN point-source light from its host galaxy, and invoke the Galaxy Morphology Posterior Estimation Network (GaMPEN) to estimate morphological parameters of the recovered host galaxy. We first trained our models on simulated data, and then fine-tuned our algorithm via transfer learning using labeled real data. To create training labels for transfer learning, we used GALFIT to fit ∼20,000 real HSC galaxies in each redshift bin. We comprehensively examined that the predicted values from our final models agree well with the GALFIT values for the vast majority of cases. Our PSFGAN + GaMPEN framework runs at least three orders of magnitude faster than traditional light-profile fitting methods, and can be easily retrained for other morphological parameters or on other data sets with diverse ranges of resolutions, seeing conditions, and signal-to-noise ratios, making it an ideal tool for analyzing AGN host galaxies from large surveys coming soon from the Rubin-LSST, Euclid, and Roman telescopes.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2407751
- PAR ID:
- 10616369
- Editor(s):
- Vishniac, Ethan
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Astronomical Society
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Astrophysical journal
- Volume:
- 981
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1538-4357
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 5
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Active galactic nuclei Extragalactic astronomy Galaxies Galaxy classification systems Astronomy data analysis Neural networks Convolutional neural networks AGN host galaxies
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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