Exploring Low-mass Black Holes through Tidal Disruption Events in the Early Universe: Perspectives in the Era of the JWST, Roman Space Telescope, and LSST Surveys

Abstract

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has recently uncovered the presence of low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (AGNs) at z = 4–11. Spectroscopic observations have provided estimates of the nuclear black hole (BH) masses for these sources, extending the low-mass boundary down to M _• ∼ 10 ^6–7 M _⊙ . Despite this breakthrough, the observed lowest mass of BHs is still ≳1–2 orders of magnitude heavier than the predicted mass range of their seed population, thereby leaving the initial mass distribution of massive BHs poorly constrained. In this paper, we focus on UV-to-optical (in the rest frame) flares of stellar tidal disruption events (TDEs) embedded in low-luminosity AGNs as a tool for exploring low-mass BH populations with ≲10 ^4–6 M _⊙ . We provide an estimate of the TDE rate over z = 4–11, associated with the properties of JWST-detected AGN host galaxies, and we find that deep and wide survey programs with JWST and the Roman Space Telescope (RST) can detect and identify TDEs up to z ≃ 4–7. The predicted detection numbers of TDEs at z > 4 in 1 yr are ${{ \mathcal N }}_{\mathrm{TDE}}\sim 2\mbox{--}10\,(0.2\mbox{--}2)$ for the JADES-Medium (and COSMOS-Web) survey with JWST and ${{ \mathcal N }}_{\mathrm{TDE}}\sim 2\mbox{--}10\,(8\mbox{--}50)$ for the deep (and wide) tiers of the High Latitude Time Domain Survey with RST. We further discuss survey strategies for hunting for transient high-redshift TDEs in wide-field surveys with RST, as well as a joint observation campaign with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory for enhancing the detection number. The high-redshift TDE search will give us a unique opportunity to probe the mass distribution of early BH populations.

Keywords

• Supermassive black holes
• Quasars
• Galaxy formation
• High-redshift galaxies
• Tidal disruption