The prospects of finding the first quasars in the universe

dc.creatorSchleicher, Dominik R. G.
dc.creatorSpaans, Marco
dc.creatorKlessen, Ralf S.
dc.date2008-12-20
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T12:21:06Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T12:21:06Z
dc.descriptionWe study the prospects of finding the first quasars in the universe with ALMA and JWST. For this purpose, we derive a model for the high-redshift black hole population based on observed relations between the black hole mass and the host galaxy. We re-address previous constraints from the X-ray background with particular focus on black hole luminosities below the Eddington limit as observed in many local AGN. For such luminosities, up to 20% of high-redshift black holes can be active quasars. We then discuss the observables of high-redshift black holes for ALMA and JWST by adopting NGC 1068 as a reference system. We calculate the expected flux of different fine-structure lines for a similar system at higher redshift, and provide further predictions for high-J CO lines. We discuss the expected fluxes from stellar light, the AGN continuum and the Lyman $α$ line for JWST. Line fluxes observed with ALMA can be used to derive detailed properties of high-redshift sources. We suggest two observational strategies to find potential AGN at high redshift and estimate the expected number of sources, which is between 1-10 for ALMA with a field of view of $\sim(1')^2$ searching for line emission and 100-1000 for JWST with a field of view of $(2.16')^2$ searching for continuum radiation. We find that both telescopes can probe high-redshift quasars down to redshift 10 and beyond, and therefore truely detect the first quasars in the universe.
dc.description20 pages, 10 figures, submitted to ApJ
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/0812.3950
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/0812.3950
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/213262
dc.subjectAstrophysics
dc.titleThe prospects of finding the first quasars in the universe
dc.typetext

Files

Collections