The role of relativistic jets in the heaviest and most active supermassive black holes at high redshift

Abstract

In powerful radio-quiet active galactic nuclei (AGN), the bulk of the population of black holes heavier than one billion solar masses form at a redshift ~ 1.5-2. Supermassive black holes in jetted radio-loud AGN seem to form earlier, at a redshift close to 4. The ratio of active radio-loud to radio-quiet AGN hosting heavy black holes is therefore a strong function of redshift. We report on some recent evidence supporting this conclusion, gathered from the Burst Alert Telescope (onboard Swift) and by the Large Area Telescope (onboard Fermi). We suggest that the more frequent occurrence of relativistic jets in the most massive black holes at high redshifts could be due to the average black hole spin being greater in the distant past, or else due to the jet helping a fast accretion rate (or some combination of the two scenarios). We emphasize that the large total accretion efficiency of rapidly spinning black holes inhibits a fast growth, unless a large fraction of the available gravitational energy of the accreted mass is not converted into radiation, but used to form and maintain a powerful jet. © 2013 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.