No evidence of obscured, accreting black holes in most z = 6 star-forming galaxies

Abstract

It has been claimed that there is a large population of obscured, accreting black holes at high redshift and that the integrated black hole density at z = 6 as inferred from X-ray observations is ∼ 100 times greater than that inferred from optical quasars. I have performed a stacking analysis of very deep Chandra X-ray data at the positions of photometrically selected z = 6 galaxy candidates. It is found that there is no evidence for a stacked X-ray signal in either the soft (0.5-2 keV) or hard (2-8 keV) X-ray bands. Previous work which reported a significant signal is affected by an incorrect method of background subtraction which underestimates the true background within the target aperture. The puzzle remains as to why the z = 6 black hole mass function has such a flat slope and a low normalization compared to the stellar mass function. © 2011. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.