Bridging Quasars and Little Red Dots: Insights into Broad-Line AGNs at from the First JWST COSMOS-3D Dataset
arXiv:2504.08039
Abstract
We report the discovery of 13 broad-line AGNs at from the first 10% data of the JWST Cycle 3 Treasury Program COSMOS-3D. These AGNs are identified by their broad H or H emission lines through the NIRCam grism wide-field slitless spectroscopy. One object at with broad H emission has an F444W magnitude of 23.6 mag, making it one of the brightest broad-line AGNs yet known. Among the 13 AGNs, 10 objects have reddened optical continua with slopes . The remaining three objects have their overall SEDs that resemble those of UV-luminous quasars at similar redshifts, but their , though negative, are not as blue as those of unobscured quasars. We also obtain MIRI photometry at 7.7-18 m for two AGNs and place strong constraints on their rest-frame near-IR SED. We find no significant variability in the rest-frame UV by comparing the COSMOS-3D and COSMOS-Web F115W images taken apart by 60 days in the rest-frame. We compute the H luminosity functions (LFs) for the broad H emitters at and find a potential redshift evolution when compared with that of the sample. We also derive the H LF at for AGNs and galaxies by combining our sample with those from the literature. The broad H emitters in this work suggest a number density two orders of magnitude higher than that predicted by the quasar LF based on rest-frame UV-selected samples. As a preview, our work showcases the ability of the COSMOS-3D grism survey to provide a complete view of the properties, growth, and evolution of bright broad-line AGNs at .
Main text: 15 pages, 12 figures. Accepted by ApJ. DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ae1b9b