Issue |
A&A
Volume 687, July 2024
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A283 | |
Number of page(s) | 9 | |
Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202347187 | |
Published online | 23 July 2024 |
GN-z11: The environment of an active galactic nucleus at z = 10.603
New insights into the most distant Lyα detection
1
Kavli Institute for Cosmology, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK
e-mail: js2685@cam.ac.uk; cw795@cam.ac.uk
2
Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, 19 JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0HE, UK
3
Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK
4
Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), CSIC–INTA, Cra. de Ajalvir Km. 4, 28850 Torrejón de Ardoz, Madrid, Spain
5
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK
6
Scuola Normale Superiore, Piazza dei Cavalieri 7, 56126 Pisa, Italy
7
Harvard University, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, 60 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 2138, USA
8
Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Denys Wilkinson Building, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH, UK
9
Sorbonne Université, CNRS, UMR 7095, Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, 98 bis bd Arago, 75014 Paris, France
10
Centre for Astrophysics Research, Department of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield AL10 9AB, UK
11
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA
12
Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John Moores University, 146 Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L3 5RF, UK
13
NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, 950 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
14
Steward Observatory University of Arizona, 933 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
15
Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, CNES, LAM (Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille), UMR 7326, 13388 Marseille, France
16
AURA for European Space Agency, Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21210, USA
17
INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisco di Arcetri, largo E. Fermi 5, 50127 Firenze, Italy
Received:
14
June
2023
Accepted:
1
March
2024
Recent observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have further refined the spectroscopic redshift of GN-z11, one of the most distant galaxies identified with the Hubble Space Telescope, at z = 10.603. The presence of extremely dense gas (> 1010 cm−3), the detection of high-ionisation lines and of CII*1335 emission, and the presence of an ionisation cone indicate that GN-z11 also hosts an active galactic nucleus. Further photometric and spectroscopic follow-up demonstrates that it lies in a large-scale, overdense structure with possible signatures of Population III stars in its halo. Surprisingly, Lyα has also been detected despite the expected largely neutral intergalactic medium at such a redshift. We exploit recent JWST/NIRSpec integral field unit observations to demonstrate that the Lyα emission in GN-z11 is part of an extended halo with a minimum size of 0.8–3.2 kpc, depending on the definition used to derive the halo size. The surface brightness of the Lyα halo around GN-z11 appears consistent with Lyα halos observed around z ∼ 6 quasars. At the wavelength of Lyα at z ∼ 10.6, we identify three other emission line candidates within the integral field unit field of view with no UV rest-frame counterpart visible in deep images from the JWST/NIRCam. If confirmed, this could be the first evidence that the local region of GN-z11 represents a candidate protocluster core, forming just 400 Myr after the Big Bang. We give a first estimate of the dark matter halo mass of this structure (Mh = 2.96−0.39+0.44 × 1010 M⊙), which is consistent with a Coma-like cluster progenitor.
Key words: galaxies: halos / galaxies: high-redshift / dark ages / reionization / first stars
© The Authors 2024
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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