First Results from the JWST Early Release Science Program Q3D: Ionization Cone, Clumpy Star Formation, and Shocks in a z = 3 Extremely Red Quasar Host

Abstract

Massive galaxies formed most actively at redshifts z = 1–3 during the period known as “cosmic noon.” Here we present an emission-line study of the extremely red quasar SDSSJ165202.64+172852.3’s host galaxy at z = 2.94, based on observations with the Near Infrared Spectrograph integral field unit on board JWST. We use standard emission-line diagnostic ratios to map the sources of gas ionization across the host and a swarm of companion galaxies. The quasar dominates the photoionization, but we also discover shock-excited regions orthogonal to the ionization cone and the quasar-driven outflow. These shocks could be merger-induced or—more likely, given the presence of a powerful galactic-scale quasar outflow—these are signatures of wide-angle outflows that can reach parts of the galaxy that are not directly illuminated by the quasar. Finally, the kinematically narrow emission associated with the host galaxy presents as a collection of 1 kpc–scale clumps forming stars at a rate of at least 200 M ⊙ yr−1. The interstellar medium within these clumps shows high electron densities, reaching up to 3000 cm−3, with metallicities ranging from half to a third solar with a positive metallicity gradient, and V-band extinctions up to 3 mag. The star formation conditions are far more extreme in these regions than in local star-forming galaxies but consistent with those of massive galaxies at cosmic noon. The JWST observations simultaneously reveal an archetypal rapidly forming massive galaxy undergoing a merger, a clumpy starburst, an episode of obscured near-Eddington quasar activity, and an extremely powerful quasar outflow.

Little Red Dots: An Abundant Population of Faint Active Galactic Nuclei at z ∼ 5 Revealed by the EIGER and FRESCO JWST Surveys

“…As the data sets that were used in this work were not explicitly designed to study these objects, there are various avenues for improving our work that we list here: (i) a detailed characterization of the connection between host galaxies and the AGN would benefit significantly from deep NIRCam and MIRI imaging data over a suite of filters, in particular filters that probe beyond the Balmer break but are free of strong emission lines. Additionally, deep NIRSpec IFU spectroscopy can benefit from the contrast enabled by spatially resolved lineprofile fitting to decompose quasar and host spectra (e.g., Vayner et al 2023), whereas mid-infrared photometry and spectroscopy can help with disentangling stellar light from dusty AGN emission; (ii) a clustering analysis to probe the host halo masses and duty cycles of the faint obscured AGN can be performed with the existing WFSS data, but is beyond the scope of this paper; (iii) more sensitive spectroscopy of fainter samples, for example using complete follow-up with NIRSpec will be useful to confirm the AGN origin of galaxies that have fainter and somewhat narrower broad components through differential line-profile fitting of, e.g., Balmer and forbidden lines as [O III]; (iv) larger samples, obtained with large area and wider band (slitless) spectroscopy extending from 2.7-5.0 μm should enable us to investigate the evolution of the faint AGN LF using broad Hα lines over various redshift intervals in the z ≈ 3 − 6.5 range. The UV luminosity M UV = −22 to −24 is a critical regime that is currently poorly probed.…”

First Results from the JWST Early Release Science Program Q3D: Powerful Quasar-driven Galactic Scale Outflow at z = 3

“…Nevertheless, we find a coupling efficiency between the kinetic luminosity of the quasar-driven outflow and bolometric luminosity of the quasar of 0.1%, which is at the minimum value required in simulations for outflow to have a substantial impact on the star formation in their host galaxies, and help establish the local scaling relation between the mass of the supermassive black hole and the mass and velocity dispersion of the bulge (Choi et al 2012;Hopkins et al 2012). In Vayner et al (2023), we detected enhanced log([S II]/Hα) and log ([O I]/Hα) emission-line ratios at larger velocity dispersions in the quasar host galaxy perpendicular to the direction of the outflow. The line ratios are also consistent with models of radiative shocks in the ISM and we interpret these results as the galaxy-scale outflow causing shocks in the ISM at a wider angle outside the ionization cone of the quasar and ahead of the outflow.…”

“…The first JWST paper on J1652 (Wylezalek et al 2022) focused on the discovery of a galaxy group around the quasar host galaxy that is likely a merger of two larger dark matter halos. Our second paper (Vayner et al 2023) analyzed the system in detail using the q3dfit software (Rupke 2014), focusing on ionized emission-line ratios to decipher the source of ionization, and warm ionized gas-phase conditions across the quasar host galaxy and the neighboring galaxies. In the quasar host galaxy, we confirmed the existence of the ionization cone along the photon diffusion path from spectropolarimetric observations toward the southwest, in the same direction as the outflow.…”

“…We can estimate the kinetic energy of the shocked region orthogonal to the outflow. Using the line ratio and velocity dispersion, we isolate the shocked region in Vayner et al (2023) and measure an Hα line flux of 2.7 × 10 −17 erg s −1 cm −2 which translates to a line luminosity of 2 × 10 42 erg s −1 . We can measure the total gas mass in the shocked region using Equation (1) and total kinetic energy due to turbulence using the following equation:…”

“…This paper follows up on our results from Wylezalek et al (2022) and Vayner et al (2023), which focused on the immediate quasar host galaxy environment and the ionization properties of the gas. This paper presents a detailed emissionline study of the warm ionized outflow in SDSSJ1652 + 1728 (hereafter J1652).…”