A blazar in the epoch of reionization

Abstract

Relativistic jets are thought to play a crucial role in the formation and evolution of massive galaxies and supermassive black holes. Blazars, which are quasars with jets aligned along our line of sight, provide insights into the jetted population and have been observed up to redshifts of z = 6.1. Here, we report the discovery and multi-wavelength characterization of the blazar VLASS J041009.05−013919.88 at z = 7 (age of the Universe ~750 Myr), which is powered by a ~7 × 108 M⊙ black hole. The presence of this high-redshift blazar implies a large population of similar but unaligned jetted sources in the early Universe. Our findings suggest two possible scenarios. In one, the jet in J0410−0139 is intrinsically low power but appears highly luminous due to relativistic beaming, suggesting that most ultraviolet-bright quasars at this redshift host jets. Alternatively, if J0410−0139 represents an intrinsically powerful radio source, there should be hundreds to thousands of radio-quiet quasars at z ≈ 7 with properties like those of J0410−0139, a prediction in tension with observed quasar densities based on their ultraviolet luminosity function. These results support the hypothesis that the rapid growth of black holes in the early Universe may be driven by jet-enhanced or obscured super-Eddington accretion, potentially playing a key role in forming massive black holes during the epoch of reionization. The discovery of a distant blazar J0410−0139 at z = 7 suggests that many similar sources existed in the early Universe, supporting the hypothesis that the rapid growth of black holes is driven by jet-enhanced or obscured accretion.