English

An extremely X--ray weak blazar at z=5

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2019-09-11 v1 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

We present the discovery and properties of DESJ014132.4-542749.9 (DES0141-54), a new powerful radio-loud active galactic nucleus (AGN) in the early Universe (z=5.0). It was discovered by cross-matching the first data release of the Dark Energy Survey (DES DR1) with the Sidney University Molonglo Survey (SUMSS) radio catalog at 0.843 GHz. This object is the first radio-loud AGN at high redshift discovered in the DES. The radio properties of DES0141-54, namely its very large radio-loudness (R>104^{4}), the high radio luminosity (L0.8GHz_{0.8 GHz}=1.73×\times1028^{28} W Hz1^{-1}), and the flatness of the radio spectrum (α\alpha=0.35) up to very high frequencies (120 GHz in the source's rest frame), classify this object as a blazar, meaning, a radio-loud AGN observed along the relativistic jet axis. However, the X--ray luminosity of DESJ0141-54 is much lower compared to those of the high redshift (z\geq4.5) blazars discovered so far. Moreover its X-ray-to-radio luminosity ratio (log(L[0.510]keVL1.4GHz\frac{L_{[0.5-10]keV}}{L_{1.4GHz}})=9.96±\pm0.30 Hz) is small also when compared to lower redshift blazars: only 2\% of the low-z population has a similar ratio. By modeling the spectral energy distribution we found that this peculiar X--ray weakness and the powerful radio emission could be related to a particularly high value of the magnetic field. Finally, the mass of the central black hole is relatively small (MBH_{BH} = 3-8 ×\times108^8 M_{\odot}) compared to other confirmed blazars at similar redshift, making DES0141-54 the radio-loud AGN that host the smallest supermassive black hole ever discovered at z\geq5.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1908.08552,
  title  = {An extremely X--ray weak blazar at z=5},
  author = {S. Belladitta and A. Moretti and A. Caccianiga and G. Ghisellini and C. Cicone and T. Sbarrato and L. Ighina and M. Pedani},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.08552},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

12 pages, 10 figures, 6 tables. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics

R2 v1 2026-06-23T10:54:37.727Z