A dormant overmassive black hole in the early Universe

Recent observations have found a large number of supermassive black holes already in place in the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang, many of which seem to be overmassive relative to their host galaxy stellar mass when compared with local relation1–9. Several different models have been proposed to explain these findings, ranging from heavy seeds to light seeds experiencing bursts of high accretion rate10–16. Yet, current datasets are unable to differentiate between these various scenarios. Here we report the detection, from the JADES survey, of broad Hα emission in a galaxy at z = 6.68, which traces a black hole with a mass of about 4 × 108M⊙ and accreting at a rate of only 0.02 times the Eddington limit. The black hole to host galaxy stellar mass ratio is about 0.4—that is, about 1,000 times above the local relation—whereas the system is closer to the local relations in terms of dynamical mass and velocity dispersion of the host galaxy. This object is most likely an indication of a much larger population of dormant black holes around the epoch of reionization. Its properties are consistent with scenarios in which short bursts of super-Eddington accretion have resulted in black hole overgrowth and massive gas expulsion from the accretion disk; in between bursts, black holes spend most of their life in a dormant state.