Galaxy mergers and gas accretion from the cosmic web drove the growth of galaxies and their central black holes at early epochs. We report spectroscopic imaging of a multiple merger event in the most luminous known galaxy, WISE J224607.56-052634.9 (W2246-0526), a dust-obscured quasar at redshift 4.6, 1.3 Gyr after the Big Bang. Far-infrared dust continuum observations show three galaxy companions around W2246-0526 with disturbed morphologies, connected by streams of dust likely produced by the dynamical interaction. The detection of tidal dusty bridges shows that W2246-0526 is accreting its neighbors, suggesting merger activity may be a dominant mechanism through which the most luminous galaxies simultaneously obscure and feed their central supermassive black holes.
@article{arxiv.1811.05992,
title = {The Multiple Merger Assembly of a Hyper-luminous Obscured Quasar at redshift 4.6},
author = {T. Diaz-Santos and R. J. Assef and A. W. Blain and M. Aravena and D. Stern and C. -W. Tsai and P. Eisenhardt and J. Wu and H. D. Jun and K. Dibert and H. Inami and G. Lansbury and F. Leclercq},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.05992},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
To be published in Science on the 15th of November 2018