2022/01/19 by Grayson C. Petter, Ryan C. Hickox, D. M. Alexander +9
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Dark matter #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Gravitational lens #Halo #OVV quasar #Physics #Quasar #Redshift #Sky #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ac4d31
Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal
arxiv created 2022/01/19 · openalex publication_date 2022/03/01 · arxiv updated 2022/03/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The observed optical colors of quasars are generally interpreted in one of two frameworks: unified models which attribute color to random orientation of the accretion disk along the line-of-sight, and evolutionary models which invoke connections between quasar systems and their environments. We test these schema by probing the dark matter halo environments of optically-selected quasars as a function of g-i optical color by measuring the two-point correlation functions of ∼ 0.34 million eBOSS quasars as well as the gravitational deflection of cosmic microwave background photons around ∼ 0.66 million XDQSO photometric quasar candidates. We do not detect a trend of halo bias with optical color through either analysis, finding that optically-selected quasars at 0.8 < z < 2.2 occupy halos of characteristic mass Mh∼ 3× 1012 h-1 M\odot regardless of their color. This result implies that a quasar's large-scale halo environment is not strongly connected to its observed optical color. We also confirm findings of fundamental differences in the radio properties of red and blue quasars by stacking 1.4 GHz FIRST images at their positions, suggesting the observed differences cannot be attributed to orientation. Instead, the differences between red and blue quasars likely arise on nuclear-galactic scales, perhaps owing to reddening by a nuclear dusty wind. Finally, we show that optically-selected quasars' halo environments are also independent of their r-W2 optical-infrared colors, while previous work has suggested that mid-infrared-selected obscured quasars occupy more massive halos. We discuss implications of this result for models of quasar and galaxy co-evolution.