A SPectroscopic Survey of Biased Halos in the Reionization Era (ASPIRE): A First Look at the Rest-frame Optical Spectra of z > 6.5 Quasars Using JWST
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Author
Yang, Jinyi
Wang, Feige
Fan, Xiaohui
Hennawi, Joseph F.
Barth, Aaron J.
Bañados, Eduardo
Sun, Fengwu
Liu, Weizhe
Cai, Zheng
Jiang, Linhua
Li, Zihao
Onoue, Masafusa
Schindler, Jan-Torge
Shen, Yue
Wu, Yunjing
Bhowmick, Aklant K.
Bieri, Rebekka
Blecha, Laura
Bosman, Sarah
Champagne, Jaclyn B.
Colina, Luis
Connor, Thomas
Costa, Tiago
Davies, Frederick B.
Decarli, Roberto
De Rosa, Gisella
Drake, Alyssa B.
Egami, Eiichi
Eilers, Anna-Christina
Evans, Analis E.
Farina, Emanuele Paolo
Habouzit, Melanie
Haiman, Zoltan
Jin, Xiangyu
Jun, Hyunsung D.
Kakiichi, Koki
Khusanova, Yana
Kulkarni, Girish
Loiacono, Federica
Lupi, Alessandro
Mazzucchelli, Chiara
Pan, Zhiwei
Rojas-Ruiz, Sofía
Strauss, Michael A.
Tee, Wei Leong
Trakhtenbrot, Benny
Trebitsch, Maxime
Venemans, Bram
Vestergaard, Marianne
Volonteri, Marta
Walter, Fabian
Xie, Zhang-Liang
Yue, Minghao
Zhang, Haowen
Zhang, Huanian
Zou, Siwei
Attention
2299/26453
Abstract
Studies of rest-frame optical emission in quasars at z > 6 have historically been limited by the wavelengths accessible by ground-based telescopes. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) now offers the opportunity to probe this emission deep into the reionization epoch. We report the observations of eight quasars at z > 6.5 using the JWST/NIRCam Wide Field Slitless Spectroscopy as a part of the “A SPectroscopic survey of biased halos In the Reionization Era (ASPIRE)” program. Our JWST spectra cover the quasars’ emission between rest frame ∼4100 and 5100 Å. The profiles of these quasars’ broad Hβ emission lines span a full width at half maximum from 3000 to 6000 km s−1. The Hβ-based virial black hole (BH) masses, ranging from 0.6 to 2.1 billion solar masses, are generally consistent with their Mg ii-based BH masses. The new measurements based on the more reliable Hβ tracer thus confirm the existence of a billion solar-mass BHs in the reionization epoch. In the observed [O iii] λ λ 4960,5008 doublets of these luminous quasars, broad components are more common than narrow core components (≤ 1200 km s−1), and only one quasar shows stronger narrow components than broad. Two quasars exhibit significantly broad and blueshifted [O iii] emission, thought to trace galactic-scale outflows, with median velocities of −610 and −1430 km s−1 relative to the [C ii] 158 μm line. All eight quasars show strong optical Fe ii emission and follow the eigenvector 1 relations defined by low-redshift quasars. The entire ASPIRE program will eventually cover 25 quasars and provide a statistical sample for the studies of the BHs and quasar spectral properties.