Subaru High-$z$ Exploration of Low-luminosity Quasars (SHELLQs). XVII. Black Hole Mass Distribution at $z \sim 6$ Estimated via Spectral Comparison with Low-$z$ Quasars

Abstract

We report the distribution of black hole (BH) masses and Eddingont ratios estimated for a sample of 131 low luminosity quasars in the early cosmic epoch ($5.6 < z < 7.0$). Our work is based on Subaru High-$z$ Exploration of Low-Luminosity Quasars (SHELLQs) project, which has constructed a low luminosity quasar sample down to $M_{1450} \sim - 21$ mag, exploiting the survey data of Hyper Suprime-Cam installed on Subaru Telescope. The discovery spectra of these quasars are limited to the rest-frame wavelengths of $\sim$ 1200 -- 1400 \AA, which contains no emission lines that can be used as BH mass estimators. In order to overcome this problem, we made use of low-$z$ counterpart spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which are spectrally matched to the high-$z$ spectra in overlapping wavelengths. We then combined the C~{\sc iv} emission line widths of the counterparts with the continuum luminosity from the SHELLQs data to estimate BH masses. The resulting BH mass distribution has a range of $\sim 10^{7-10} M_{\odot}$, with most of the quasars having BH masses $\sim 10^{8} M_{\odot}$ with sub-Eddington accretion. The present study provides not only a new insight into normal quasars in the reionization epoch, but also a new promising way to estimate BH masses of high-$z$ quasars without near-infrared spectroscopy.