DISCOVERY OF EIGHTz∼ 6 QUASARS FROM Pan-STARRS1

2014/05/15 by E. Bañados, B. P. Venemans, E. Morganson +26 · 11 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Emission spectrum #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #OVV quasar #Population #Quasar #Redshift #Telescope #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.GA

paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-6256/148/1/14

published as AJ, 148, 14, 2014 · AJ in press, 16 pages, 5 figures, 7 tables

arxiv created 2014/05/15 · openalex publication_date 2014/06/04 · arxiv updated 2014/06/09 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Abstract

High-redshift quasars are currently the only probes of the growth of supermassive black holes and potential tracers of structure evolution at early cosmic time. Here we present our candidate selection criteria from the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System 1 and follow-up strategy to discover quasars in the redshift range 5.7 ≲ z ≲ 6.2. With this strategy we discovered eight new 5.7 ⩽ z ⩽ 6.0 quasars, increasing the number of known quasars at z > 5.7 by more than 10%. We additionally recovered 18 previously known quasars. The eight quasars presented here span a large range of luminosities (−27.3 ⩽ M 1450 ⩽ −25.4; 19.6 ⩽ z P1 ⩽ 21.2) and are remarkably heterogeneous in their spectral features: half of them show bright emission lines whereas the other half show a weak or no Lyα emission line (25% with rest-frame equivalent width of the Lyα +N v line lower than 15 Å). We find a larger fraction of weak-line emission quasars than in lower redshift studies. This may imply that the weak-line quasar population at the highest redshifts could be more abundant than previously thought. However, larger samples of quasars are needed to increase the statistical significance of this finding.

Citations

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• HIGH-REDSHIFT SDSS QUASARS WITH WEAK EMISSION LINES
• Clustering of High-Redshift (z≥ 2.9) Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• NINE-YEAR WILKINSON MICROWAVE ANISOTROPY PROBE ( WMAP ) OBSERVATIONS: COSMOLOGICAL PARAMETER RESULTS
• The Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS)
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• The Infrared Medium-deep Survey. VI. Discovery of Faint Quasars at z ∼ 5 with a Medium-band-based Approach
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• The Infrared Medium-deep Survey. IV. The Low Eddington Ratio of A Faint Quasar at z ∼ 6: Not Every Supermassive Black Hole is Growing Fast in the Early Universe
• WEAK EMISSION-LINE QUASARS IN THE CONTEXT OF A MODIFIED BALDWIN EFFECT
• Inferring the star-formation histories of the most massive and passive early-type galaxies atz< 0.3
• DETECTION OF REST-FRAME OPTICAL LINES FROM X-SHOOTER SPECTROSCOPY OF WEAK EMISSION-LINE QUASARS
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