A SURVEY OF z ∼ 6 QUASARS IN THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY DEEP STRIPE. I. A FLUX-LIMITED SAMPLE AT zAB < 21

By Linhua Jiang, Xiaohui Fan, James Annis, Robert H. Becker, R. White, K. Chiu, Huan Lin, Robert Lupton, Gordon Richards, M. Strauss and 2 more. 2007

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We present the discovery of five quasars at z ∼ 6 selected from 260 deg2 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) southern survey, a deep imaging survey obtained by repeatedly scanning a stripe along the celestial equator. The five quasars with 20 < zAB < 21 are 1–2 magnitudes fainter than the luminous z ∼ 6 quasars discovered in the SDSS main survey. One of them was independently discovered by the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey. These quasars, combined with another z ∼ 6 quasar known in this region, make a complete flux-limited quasar sample at zAB < 21. The sample spans the redshift range 5.85 ⩽ z ⩽ 6.12 and the luminosity range −26.5 ⩽ M1450 ⩽ −25.4 (H0 = 70 km s−1 Mpc−1, Ωm = 0.3, and ΩΛ = 0.7). We use the 1/Va method to determine that the comoving quasar spatial density at 〈z〉 = 6.0 and 〈M1450〉 = −25.8 is (5.0 ± 2.1) × 10−9 Mpc−3 mag−1. We model the bright-end quasar luminosity function (QLF) at z ∼ 6 as a power law Φ(L1450) ∝ Lβ1450. The slope β calculated from a combination of our sample and the luminous SDSS quasar sample is −3.1 ± 0.4, significantly steeper than the slope of the QLF at z ∼ 4. Based on the derived QLF, we find that the quasar/active galactic nucleus (AGN) population cannot provide enough photons to ionize the intergalactic medium (IGM) at z ∼ 6 unless the IGM is very homogeneous and the luminosity (L*1450) at which the QLF power law breaks is very low.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e3426d25005d6f70c62dbf7d37f01fd72d1a7d00

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The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Sample Characterization (2018, background): “…include peculiar dust reddened quasars, quasars with doublepeaked broad emission lines (dubbed “disk emitters”, Chen et al. 1989; Eracleous & Halpern 1994), broad and narrow absorption line quasars, strong Fe II emitters, and quasars with unusually strong nitrogen emission (Jiang et al. 2008b).”
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An ALMA [C ii] Survey of 27 Quasars at z > 5.94 (2018, background): “Their black hole masses, typically estimated from the Mg II broad emission line at 2796 Å rest frame, are of the order of 109 M (e.g., Jiang et al. 2008; De Rosa et al. 2011, 2014).”
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