Astro Lunch: Erini Lambrides (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center )

January 26, 2024 - 11:00am

 

A Crisis at Early Epochs?: Uncovering Representative Samples of Growing Supermassive Black Holes Beyond Cosmic Noon

First results from JWST have already raised numerous questions on the prevalence, growth, and impact of growing supermassive black holes, hereinafter active galactic nuclei or AGN. Is there an over abundance of AGN at early times? Are AGN contributing to the shut down of star-formation in the first quenched galaxies? Does the relationship between AGN and their host-galaxies vary at different cosmic epochs? Results are mixed and conclusions varied -- how we select these AGN, build significant samples, and measure their host-galaxy properties needs to be revisited. From little red dots to booming diffraction spikes, COSMOS-Web, the largest JWST Cycle 1 proposal to date, will uncover a treasure trove of AGN and/or offer unprecedented insight into the nature of their host galaxies across cosmic time. The wide-area probed by our JWST observations coupled with deep ancillary data from X-ray to the radio makes the COSMOS-Web field uniquely equipped to efficiently select rare, luminous AGN during the Epoch of Reionization, in addition to selecting an unprecedented number of fainter AGN at Cosmic Noon. In this talk, I will detail our discovery of the highest-redshift (z~8) heavily obscured radio powerful AGN candidate uncovered in the COSMOS-Web field via deep JWST, Radio, and sub-mm imaging data. I will discuss our novel selection algorithm in uncovering more of these radio powerful sources, and present, for the first time, our preliminary results on the highest-redshift sample of heavily obscured AGN with JWST imaging. We find these sources live amongst the most massive, star-forming galaxies of their epoch, and I will discuss the implications these results have in the context of the high-z AGN candidates solely identified with JWST. Furthermore, I will highlight other recent AGN related discoveries that have already occurred within the currently completed portion of the COSMOS-Web field as well as looking towards the future AGN science that will be enabled upon completion of observations.

Location and Address

321 Allen Hall & Zoom ID: 970 7106 8691