Fig. 3: Volume densities of z > 6 broad-line AGN and quasars.
From: A little red dot at z = 7.3 within a large galaxy overdensity
Left: binned UV luminosity function estimates of spectroscopically confirmed JWST (red) AGNs1,6 (blue and green squares) and photometrically selected LRDs16 (dark blue squares) in comparison with galaxies92,93 and quasars19 at z ≈ 7. Our estimate based on J1007_AGN (bright red) agrees well with the other measurements for faint JWST AGNs but falls orders of magnitude above the faint-end extrapolation of the z ≈ 7 quasar luminosity function19 (grey solid line). Right: measurements of the bolometric luminosity function for red AGNs spectroscopically confirmed with JWST6 (green squares) and photometrically selected LRDs17 (blue circles) compared with our estimate (bright red) and two bolometric model fits of a quasar luminosity function35 at z ≈ 6 (grey). Model A (solid grey line) has a flexible faint-end slope evolution, whereas the faint-end slope is restricted to evolve monotonically in model B (dashed grey line). Dereddening J1007_AGN by \({A}_\mathrm{V}={2.79}_{-0.25}^{+0.25}\,{\rm{mag}}\) increases the bolometric luminosity by a factor of ~10 (open bright red diamond), pushing the source well into the quasar regime, Lbol ≳ 1046 erg s−1. Vertical error bars on the literature measurements reflect the 1σ statistical uncertainties. For our luminosity function estimate (bright red), the error bars indicate the 1σ confidence interval for a N = 1 Poisson distribution83. Error bars in the luminosity direction indicate the luminosity bin width. LF, luminosity function; QLF, quasar luminosity function.
