Masafusa Onoue, Xuheng Ding, John D. Silverman, Yoshiki Matsuoka, Takuma Izumi, Michael A. Strauss, Charlotte Ward, Camryn L. Phillips, Irham T. Andika, Kentaro Aoki, Junya Arita, Shunsuke Baba, Rebekka Bieri, Sarah E. I. Bosman, Anna-Christina Eilers, Seiji Fujimoto, Melanie Habouzit, Zoltan Haiman, Masatoshi Imanishi, Kohei Inayoshi, Kei Ito, Kazushi Iwasawa, Knud Jahnke, Nobunari Kashikawa, Toshihiro Kawaguchi, Kotaro Kohno, Chien-Hsiu Lee, Junyao Li, Alessandro Lupi, Jianwei Lyu, Tohru Nagao, Roderik Overzier, Jan-Torge Schindler, Malte Schramm, Matthew T. Scoggins, Kazuhiro Shimasaku, Yoshiki Toba, Benny Trakhtenbrot, Maxime Trebitsch, Tommaso Treu, Hideki Umehata, Bram Venemans, Marianne Vestergaard, Marta Volonteri, Fabian Walter, Feige Wang, Jinyi Yang, Haowen Zhang
Published 2024-09-11, 24 pages, 7 figures, submitted to a Nature journal
Understanding the rapid formation of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in theearly universe requires an understanding of how stellar mass grows in the hostgalaxies. Here, we perform an analysis of rest-frame optical spectra andimaging from JWST of two quasar host galaxies at z>6 which exhibit Balmerabsorption lines. These features in the stellar continuum indicate a lack ofyoung stars, similar to low-redshift post-starburst galaxies whose starformation was recently quenched. We find that the stellar mass (log(M_* /M_sun) > 10.6) of each quasar host grew in a starburst episode at redshift 7 or8. One of the targets exhibits little ongoing star formation, as evidenced bythe photometric signature of the Balmer break and a lack of spatially resolvedH-alpha emission, placing it well below the star formation main sequence at z =6. The other galaxy is transitioning to a quiescent phase; together, the twogalaxies represent the most distant massive post-starburst galaxies known. Thematurity of these two galaxies is further supported by the stellar velocitydispersions of their host galaxies, placing them slightly above the upper endof the local M_BH - sigma_* relation. The properties of our two post-starburstgalaxies, each hosting an active SMBH with log(M_BH / M_sun) > 9, suggests thatblack holes played a major role in shaping the formation of the first massivegalaxies in the Universe.