A SIMPLE LIKELIHOOD METHOD FOR QUASAR TARGET SELECTION

By J. Kirkpatrick, David Schlegel, N. Ross, Adam D. Myers, J. Hennawi, Erin Sheldon, D. Schneider, B. Weaver. 2011

54 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a new method for quasar target selection using photometric fluxes and a Bayesian probabilistic approach. For our purposes, we target quasars using Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) photometry to a magnitude limit of g = 22. The efficiency and completeness of this technique are measured using the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) data taken in 2010. This technique was used for the uniformly selected (CORE) sample of targets in BOSS year-one spectroscopy to be realized in the ninth SDSS data release. When targeting at a density of 40 objects deg−2 (the BOSS quasar targeting density), the efficiency of this technique in recovering z > 2.2 quasars is 40%. The completeness compared to all quasars identified in BOSS data is 65%. This paper also describes possible extensions and improvements for this technique.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

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Citations in the corpus

One-Class Support Measure Machines for Group Anomaly Detection (2013, methodology): “Experiments on Sloan Digital Sky Survey dataset and High Energy Particle Physics dataset demonstrate the benefits of the proposed framework in real-world applications.”
THE SDSS-III BARYON OSCILLATION SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY: QUASAR TARGET SELECTION FOR DATA RELEASE NINE (2011, methodology): “• A likelihood approach (Kirkpatrick et al. 2011), which determines the likelihood that each object is a quasar, given its photometry and models for the stellar and quasar loci.”
Clustering of intermediate redshift quasars using the final SDSS III-BOSS sample (2015, methodology): “As such, a heterog - neous range of multi-wavelength data was used to targetBOSS quasars, and a number of methods were incorporated into the survey in addition toXDQSO (Richards et al. 2009; Yèche et al. 2010; Kirkpatrick et al. 2011; see Ross et al. 2012b).”
Measurement of BAO correlations at $z=2.3$ with SDSS DR12 \lya-Forests (2017, methodology): “The quasar target selection used in BOSS, summarized in Ross et al. (2012), combines different targeting methods described in Yèche et al. (2010), Kirkpatrick et al. (2011), and Bovy et al. (2011).”
THE BARYON OSCILLATION SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY OF SDSS-III (2012, background): “…a “Likelihood” approach which determines the likelihood that each object is a quasar, given its photometry and models for the stellar and quasar loci (Kirkpatrick et al. 2011); an “Extreme Deconvolution” (XDQSO; Bovy et al. 2011a,b) selection, which performs a density estimation of stars and…”
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey quasar catalog: ninth data release (2012, methodology): “…of four methods: the Non-Parametric Bayesian Classification and Kernel Density Estimator (KDE; Richards et al. 2004, 2009), the likelihood method (Kirkpatrick et al. 2011), a neural network (Yèche et al. 2010) and the XDQSO method (Bovy et al. 2011, 2012, objects for lower likelihood than in…”
Baryon acoustic oscillations from the cross-correlation of Lyα absorption and quasars in eBOSS DR14 (2019, methodology): “The quasar target selection for BOSS, summarized in Ross et al. (2012), combines different targeting methods described in Yèche et al. (2010), Kirkpatrick et al. (2011), and Bovy et al. (2011).”
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey quasar catalog: tenth data release (2013, methodology): “…methods (a neural network combinator: Yèche et al. (2010); a Kernel Density Estimator, KDE: Richards et al. (2004, 2009); a likelihood method: Kirkpatrick et al. (2011), and the XDQSO method with lower likelihood than in the CORE sample) were implemented to select the BONUS quasar targets.”
THE z = 5 QUASAR LUMINOSITY FUNCTION FROM SDSS STRIPE 82 (2012, background): “These probabilities can be used to efficiently select quasar candidates (Bovy et al. 2011; Kirkpatrick et al. 2011).”
THE SDSS-III BARYON OSCILLATION SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY: THE QUASAR LUMINOSITY FUNCTION FROM DATA RELEASE NINE (2012, methodology): “Indeed, Bovy et al. (2011) demonstrate that XDQSO and the Likelihood method (Kirkpatrick et al. 2011), used as CORE for Year One, select similar samples.”
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog: Twelfth data release (2016, methodology): “…different methods – a neural network combinator (Yèche et al. 2010), a Kernel Density Estimator (KDE; Richards et al. 2004, 2009), a likelihood method (Kirkpatrick et al. 2011), and the XDQSO method with lower likelihood than in the CORE sample – are combined to select the BONUS quasar targets.”
Baryon acoustic oscillations in the Lyα forest of BOSS DR11 quasars (2014, methodology): “The quasar spectroscopy targets are selected from photometric data via a combination of algorithms (Richards et al., 2009; Yeche et al., 2009; Kirkpatrick et al., 2011; Bovy et al., 2011; Palanque-Delabrouille et al., 2011), as summarized in Ross et al. (2012).”
Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Ly-\alpha\ forest of BOSS quasars (2012, methodology): “The quasar spectroscopy targets are selected from photometric data with a combination of algorithms (Richards et al. 2009; Yeche et al. 2009; Kirkpatrick et al. 2011; Bovy et al. 2011; Palanque-Delabrouille et al. 2011; for a summary, see Ross et al. (2012)).”
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog: Fourteenth data release (2017, methodology): “In order to maximize the number of z > 2 quasars, the target selection for SDSS-III/BOSS used a variety of target selection algorithms (Bovy et al. 2011, 2012; Kirkpatrick et al. 2011; Yèche et al. 2010; Palanque-Delabrouille et al. 2011; Richards et al. 2004).”
SPECTRAL CLASSIFICATION AND REDSHIFT MEASUREMENT FOR THE SDSS-III BARYON OSCILLATION SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY (2012, unknown): “The main BOSS survey program consists of two galaxy target samples (Padmanabhan et al. 2012) and a quasar target sample including both color-selected candidates and known quasars (Bovy et al. 2011; Kirkpatrick et al. 2011; Ross et al. 2012b).”
Baryon acoustic oscillations from the complete SDSS-III Ly$\alpha$-quasar cross-correlation function at $z=2.4$ (2017, methodology): “The quasar target selection used in BOSS, summarized in Ross et al. (2012), combines different targeting methods described in Yèche et al. (2010), Kirkpatrick et al. (2011), and Bovy et al. (2011).”
The one-dimensional Lyα forest power spectrum from BOSS (2013, methodology): “The quasars, whose spectra cover the Lyα forest of interest for this work, are selected with several algorithms based on the SDSS imaging (Yèche et al. 2010; Kirkpatrick et al. 2011; Bovy et al. 2011; PalanqueDelabrouille et al. 2011), which are all summarized in Ross et al. (2012).”