An empirical approach to selecting the first growing black hole seeds with JWST/NIRCam

Abstract

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will have the sensitivity to detect early low-mass black holes as they transition from "seeds" to supermassive black holes (BHs). Based on the JAGUAR mock catalog of galaxies, we present a clean color selection that takes advantage of the unique UV slope of accreting supermassive black holes with relatively low mass and high accretion rates. We show for a range of host stellar masses that those galaxies hosting $\sim 10^6{M}_{\odot }$ BHs radiating at >10% of their Eddington luminosity separate in color space from inactive systems. Here we propose a set of 3-band, 2-color selection boxes (with 90% completeness; 90% purity; balanced purity/completeness) with JWST/NIRCam to identify the most promising growing BH candidates at $z\sim 7-10$.

arXiv commentUpdated to accepted version. 11 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Published in ApJL

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