GA-NIFS: A massive black hole in a low-metallicity AGN at z ∼ 5.55 revealed by JWST/NIRSpec IFS

Abstract

We present rest-frame optical data of the compact z = 5.55 galaxy GS_3073 obtained using the integral field spectroscopy mode of the Near-InfraRed Spectrograph on board the James Webb Space Telescope. The galaxy’s prominent broad components in several hydrogen and helium lines (though absent in the forbidden lines) and v detection of a large equivalent width of He IIλ4686, EW(He II) ∼20 Å, unambiguously identify it as an active galactic nucleus (AGN). We measured a gas phase metallicity of Zgas/Z⊙∼0.21−0.04+0.08 , which is lower than what has been inferred for both more luminous AGN at a similar redshift and lower redshift AGN. We empirically show that classical emission line ratio diagnostic diagrams cannot be used to distinguish between the primary ionisation source (AGN or star formation) for systems with such low metallicity, though different diagnostic diagrams involving He IIλ4686 prove very useful, independent of metallicity. We measured the central black hole mass to be log(MBH/M⊙)∼8.2 ± 0.4 based on the luminosity and width of the broad line region of the Hα emission. While this places GS_3073 at the lower end of known high-redshift black hole masses, it still appears to be overly massive when compared to its host galaxy’s mass properties. We detected an outflow with a projected velocity ≳700 km s−1 and inferred an ionised gas mass outflow rate of about 100 M⊙ yr−1, suggesting that one billion years after the Big Bang, GS_3073 is able to enrich the intergalactic medium with metals.