Radio Emission From a z = 10.1 Black Hole in UHZ1

Abstract

The recent discovery of a 4 × 10 ^7 M _⊙ black hole (BH) in UHZ1 at z = 10.3, just 450 Myr after the Big Bang, suggests that the seeds of the first quasars may have been direct-collapse BHs from the collapse of supermassive primordial stars at z ∼ 20. This object was identified in James Webb Space Telescope NIRcam and Chandra X-ray data, but recent studies suggest that radio emission from such a BH should also be visible to the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) and the next-generation Very Large Array (ngVLA). Here, we present estimates of radio flux densities for UHZ1 from 0.1 to 10 GHz, and find that SKA and ngVLA could detect it with integration times of 10–100 hr and just 1–10 hr, respectively. It may be possible to see this object with VLA now with longer integration times. The detection of radio emission from UHZ1 would be a first test of exciting new synergies between near-infrared and radio observatories that could open the era of z ∼ 5–15 quasar astronomy in the coming decade.

Keywords

• Astrophysical black holes