What are the Pillars of Reionization? Revising the AGN Luminosity Function at z~5

Understand

In the past, high-z AGNs were given a minor role as possible drivers of reionization, despite initial evidences in favor of their large space densities at low luminosities by Chandra and HST.

• Recent observations from JWST are finding relatively large numbers of faint AGNs at z>4, convincingly confirming these early results.
• We present a sample of z~5 AGNs (both from wide, shallow ground-based surveys and from deep, pencil-beam observations from JWST), allowing to estimate their space densities with unprecedented accuracy.
• The bright end (M1450<-26) of the z~5 AGN luminosity function is well constrained, with a rather steep slope.