Science with a supermassive black hole at z=6.4: host, environment, cosmic re-ionization.

  • Event Date: 2017-06-01
  • Particle/String/Cosmology
  • Speaker: Prof. Tomotsugu Goto (NTHU)  /  Host: Prof. Pai-hsien Jennifer Hsu (NTHU)
    Place: R521, 5F, 2nd General Building, Nat'l Tsing Hua Univ.

I will talk about our recent discovery of a 22kpc-size extended structure around a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at z=6.4. The structure is likely to be 60% Lyman alpha emission and 40% continuum.This is the first time such an extended emission was found around a SMBH at z>6, and thus, has an important implication for the SMBH/galaxy formation. We also found an overdensity of galaxies by 7 times around the same SMBH. This could be a discovery of the most distant proto-cluster around a SMBH at z=6.4. The galaxies avoid immediate vicinity of the SMBH, possibly suggesting suppression of galaxy formation by strong UV radiation from the SMBH. To confirm this, our recent narrow-band observation found no Lyman alpha emitting galaxies when ~100 are expected. Lastly, we performed the Gunn-Peterson test with the SMBH to measure the cosmic re-ionization history. In the SMBH spectra, we found a 300Mpc-long dark region where flux was consistent with zero. I will present the optical depth measurements, and discuss the implication for the cosmic reionization history.