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<p>Quasars, powered by supermassive black holes, are among the brightest objects in the Universe. In the vicinity of a supermassive black hole, X-ray photons from an active galactic nucleus can heat the surrounding gas to several hundred kelvin. Here we report observations of dust continuum and carbon monoxide (CO) <i>J</i> = 13–12 and <i>J</i> = 14–13 line emissions at a resolution of 130 pc in a luminous quasar at a redshift of 6. We successfully detected these high-<i>J</i> CO line emissions from warm gas in a compact disk component. The CO luminosity ratio in the central region of the compact disk is consistent with theoretical models in which X-ray heating dominates the CO excitation and the gas column density is as high as 10<sup>25</sup> cm<sup>−2</sup>. This finding demonstrates that high-resolution observations of high-<i>J</i> CO lines are promising ways to identify extremely dust-obscured quasars in the early Universe.</p>

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Warm gas in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole 13 billion years ago

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年3月7日

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  • K. Tadaki,
  • F. Esposito,
  • L. Vallini,
  • T. Tsukui,
  • T. Saito,
  • D. Iono,
  • T. Michiyama

摘要

Quasars, powered by supermassive black holes, are among the brightest objects in the Universe. In the vicinity of a supermassive black hole, X-ray photons from an active galactic nucleus can heat the surrounding gas to several hundred kelvin. Here we report observations of dust continuum and carbon monoxide (CO) J = 13–12 and J = 14–13 line emissions at a resolution of 130 pc in a luminous quasar at a redshift of 6. We successfully detected these high-J CO line emissions from warm gas in a compact disk component. The CO luminosity ratio in the central region of the compact disk is consistent with theoretical models in which X-ray heating dominates the CO excitation and the gas column density is as high as 1025 cm−2. This finding demonstrates that high-resolution observations of high-J CO lines are promising ways to identify extremely dust-obscured quasars in the early Universe.