Quasar clustering at redshift 6

J. Greiner; J. Bolmer; R. M. Yates; M. Habouzit; E. Bañados; P. M.J. Afonso; P. Schady

doi:10.1051/0004-6361/202140790

Quasar clustering at redshift 6

J. Greiner, J. Bolmer, R. M. Yates, M. Habouzit, E. Bañados, P. M.J. Afonso, P. Schady

Department of Physics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

5 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

Context. Large-scale surveys over the last years have revealed about 300 quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) at redshifts above 6. Follow-up observations have identified surprising properties, such as the very high black hole (BH) masses, spatial correlations with surrounding cold gas of the host galaxy, and high CIV-MgII » Velocity shifts. In particular, the discovery of luminous high-redshift quasars suggests that at least some BHs likely have high masses at birth and grow efficiently. Aims. Our aim is to quantify quasar pairs at high redshift for a large sample of objects. This provides a new key constraint on a combination of parameters related to the origin and assembly for the most massive BHs: formation efficiency and clustering, growth efficiency, and the relative contribution of BH mergers. Methods. We observed 116 spectroscopically confirmed QSOs around redshift 6 with the simultaneous seven-channel imager Gamma-ray Burst Optical/Near-infrared Detector in order to search for companions. Applying colour-colour cuts identical to those which led to the spectroscopically confirmed QSOs, we performed Le PHARE fits to the 26 best QSO pair candidates, and obtained spectroscopic observations for 11 of them. Results. We do not find any QSO pair with a companion brighter than M1450(AB) < -26 mag within our 0.1-3.3 h-1 cMpc search radius, in contrast to the serendipitous findings in the redshift range 4-5. However, a small fraction of such pairs at this luminosity and redshift is consistent with indications from present-day cosmological-scale galaxy evolution models. In turn, the incidence of L- and T-type brown dwarfs, which occupy a similar colour space to z ∼ 6 QSOs, is higher than expected, by a factor of 5 and 20, respectively.

Original language	English
Article number	A79
Number of pages	18
Journal	Astronomy and Astrophysics
Volume	654
Early online date	15 Oct 2021
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202140790
Publication status	Published - 31 Oct 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
and the Australian Astronomical Observatory. SkyMapper is owned and operated by The Australian National University’s Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. The survey data were processed and provided by the SkyMap-per Team at ANU. The SkyMapper node of the All-Sky Virtual Observatory (ASVO) is hosted at the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI). Development and support the SkyMapper node of the ASVO has been funded in part by Astronomy Australia Limited (AAL) and the Australian Government through the Commonwealth’s Education Investment Fund (EIF) and National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), particularly the National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) and the Australian National Data Service Projects (ANDS). This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation.

Funding Information:
Acknowledgements. We thank the referee for the detailed comments. Part of the funding for GROND (both hardware as well as personnel) was generously granted from the Leibniz-Prize to Prof. G. Hasinger (DFG grant HA 1850/28-1). P. S. acknowledges support through the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany while at MPE. J. G. greatly acknowledges the GROND observers Thomas Krühler, Tassilo Schweyer, Simon Steinmassl, Helmut Steinle and Phil Wiseman. We explicitly acknowledge the open attitude of providing the detailed model predictions for dwarfs by Ryan & Reid (2016) for download, which only enabled the creation of Fig. 5. The reported spectroscopy is based on observations obtained at the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF’s NOIRLab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation on behalf of the Gemini Observatory partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), National Research Council (Canada), Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Argentina), Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações (Brazil), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). This paper includes data gathered with the 6.5 m Magellan Telescopes located at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. For photometric calibration, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, PanSTARRS, SkyMapper and 2MASS are acknowledged: Funding for SDSS-III has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, and the US Department of Energy Office of Science. The SDSS-III web site is http://www.sdss3.org/. SDSS-III is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions of the SDSS-III Collaboration including the University of Arizona, the Brazilian Participation Group, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Florida, the French Participation Group, the German Participation Group, Harvard University, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, the Michigan State/Notre Dame/JINA Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, New Mexico State University, New York University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the Spanish Participation Group, University of Tokyo, University of Utah, Vanderbilt University, University of Virginia, University of Washington, and Yale University. The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys (PS1) have been made possible through contributions of the Institute for Astronomy, the University of Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS Project Office, the Max-Planck Society and its participating institutes, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, The Johns Hopkins University, Durham University, the University of Edinburgh, Queen’s University Belfast, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network Incorporated, the National Central University of Taiwan, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant No. NNX08AR22G issued through the Planetary Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate, the National Science Foundation under Grant No. AST-1238877, the University of Maryland, and Eotvos Lorand University (ELTE). The national facility capability for SkyMapper has been funded through ARC LIEF grant LE130100104 from the Australian Research Council, awarded to the University of Sydney, the Australian National University, Swinburne University of Technology, the University of Queensland, the University of Western Australia, the University of Melbourne, Curtin University of Technology, Monash University

Keywords

Brown dwarfs
Early Universe
Galaxies: active
Quasars: general
Stars: low-mass

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Astronomy and Astrophysics
Space and Planetary Science

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10.1051/0004-6361/202140790Licence: CC BY

Cite this

@article{9eb2184ece1d4cf1888f48d3c9168183,

title = "Quasar clustering at redshift 6",

abstract = "Context. Large-scale surveys over the last years have revealed about 300 quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) at redshifts above 6. Follow-up observations have identified surprising properties, such as the very high black hole (BH) masses, spatial correlations with surrounding cold gas of the host galaxy, and high CIV-MgII » Velocity shifts. In particular, the discovery of luminous high-redshift quasars suggests that at least some BHs likely have high masses at birth and grow efficiently. Aims. Our aim is to quantify quasar pairs at high redshift for a large sample of objects. This provides a new key constraint on a combination of parameters related to the origin and assembly for the most massive BHs: formation efficiency and clustering, growth efficiency, and the relative contribution of BH mergers. Methods. We observed 116 spectroscopically confirmed QSOs around redshift 6 with the simultaneous seven-channel imager Gamma-ray Burst Optical/Near-infrared Detector in order to search for companions. Applying colour-colour cuts identical to those which led to the spectroscopically confirmed QSOs, we performed Le PHARE fits to the 26 best QSO pair candidates, and obtained spectroscopic observations for 11 of them. Results. We do not find any QSO pair with a companion brighter than M1450(AB) < -26 mag within our 0.1-3.3 h-1 cMpc search radius, in contrast to the serendipitous findings in the redshift range 4-5. However, a small fraction of such pairs at this luminosity and redshift is consistent with indications from present-day cosmological-scale galaxy evolution models. In turn, the incidence of L- and T-type brown dwarfs, which occupy a similar colour space to z ∼ 6 QSOs, is higher than expected, by a factor of 5 and 20, respectively.",

keywords = "Brown dwarfs, Early Universe, Galaxies: active, Quasars: general, Stars: low-mass",

author = "J. Greiner and J. Bolmer and Yates, {R. M.} and M. Habouzit and E. Ba{\~n}ados and Afonso, {P. M.J.} and P. Schady",

note = "Funding Information: and the Australian Astronomical Observatory. SkyMapper is owned and operated by The Australian National University{\textquoteright}s Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. The survey data were processed and provided by the SkyMap-per Team at ANU. The SkyMapper node of the All-Sky Virtual Observatory (ASVO) is hosted at the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI). Development and support the SkyMapper node of the ASVO has been funded in part by Astronomy Australia Limited (AAL) and the Australian Government through the Commonwealth{\textquoteright}s Education Investment Fund (EIF) and National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), particularly the National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) and the Australian National Data Service Projects (ANDS). This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. Funding Information: Acknowledgements. We thank the referee for the detailed comments. Part of the funding for GROND (both hardware as well as personnel) was generously granted from the Leibniz-Prize to Prof. G. Hasinger (DFG grant HA 1850/28-1). P. S. acknowledges support through the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany while at MPE. J. G. greatly acknowledges the GROND observers Thomas Kr{\"u}hler, Tassilo Schweyer, Simon Steinmassl, Helmut Steinle and Phil Wiseman. We explicitly acknowledge the open attitude of providing the detailed model predictions for dwarfs by Ryan & Reid (2016) for download, which only enabled the creation of Fig. 5. The reported spectroscopy is based on observations obtained at the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF{\textquoteright}s NOIRLab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation on behalf of the Gemini Observatory partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), National Research Council (Canada), Agencia Nacional de Investigaci{\'o}n y Desarrollo (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnolog{\'i}a e Innovaci{\'o}n (Argentina), Minist{\'e}rio da Ci{\^e}ncia, Tecnologia, Inova{\c c}{\~o}es e Comunica{\c c}{\~o}es (Brazil), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). This paper includes data gathered with the 6.5 m Magellan Telescopes located at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. For photometric calibration, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, PanSTARRS, SkyMapper and 2MASS are acknowledged: Funding for SDSS-III has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, and the US Department of Energy Office of Science. The SDSS-III web site is http://www.sdss3.org/. SDSS-III is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions of the SDSS-III Collaboration including the University of Arizona, the Brazilian Participation Group, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Florida, the French Participation Group, the German Participation Group, Harvard University, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, the Michigan State/Notre Dame/JINA Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, New Mexico State University, New York University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the Spanish Participation Group, University of Tokyo, University of Utah, Vanderbilt University, University of Virginia, University of Washington, and Yale University. The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys (PS1) have been made possible through contributions of the Institute for Astronomy, the University of Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS Project Office, the Max-Planck Society and its participating institutes, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, The Johns Hopkins University, Durham University, the University of Edinburgh, Queen{\textquoteright}s University Belfast, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network Incorporated, the National Central University of Taiwan, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant No. NNX08AR22G issued through the Planetary Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate, the National Science Foundation under Grant No. AST-1238877, the University of Maryland, and Eotvos Lorand University (ELTE). The national facility capability for SkyMapper has been funded through ARC LIEF grant LE130100104 from the Australian Research Council, awarded to the University of Sydney, the Australian National University, Swinburne University of Technology, the University of Queensland, the University of Western Australia, the University of Melbourne, Curtin University of Technology, Monash University ",

year = "2021",

month = oct,

day = "31",

doi = "10.1051/0004-6361/202140790",

language = "English",

volume = "654",

journal = "Astronomy and Astrophysics",

issn = "0004-6361",

publisher = "Springer Verlag",

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TY - JOUR

T1 - Quasar clustering at redshift 6

AU - Greiner, J.

AU - Bolmer, J.

AU - Yates, R. M.

AU - Habouzit, M.

AU - Bañados, E.

AU - Afonso, P. M.J.

AU - Schady, P.

N1 - Funding Information: and the Australian Astronomical Observatory. SkyMapper is owned and operated by The Australian National University’s Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. The survey data were processed and provided by the SkyMap-per Team at ANU. The SkyMapper node of the All-Sky Virtual Observatory (ASVO) is hosted at the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI). Development and support the SkyMapper node of the ASVO has been funded in part by Astronomy Australia Limited (AAL) and the Australian Government through the Commonwealth’s Education Investment Fund (EIF) and National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), particularly the National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) and the Australian National Data Service Projects (ANDS). This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. Funding Information: Acknowledgements. We thank the referee for the detailed comments. Part of the funding for GROND (both hardware as well as personnel) was generously granted from the Leibniz-Prize to Prof. G. Hasinger (DFG grant HA 1850/28-1). P. S. acknowledges support through the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany while at MPE. J. G. greatly acknowledges the GROND observers Thomas Krühler, Tassilo Schweyer, Simon Steinmassl, Helmut Steinle and Phil Wiseman. We explicitly acknowledge the open attitude of providing the detailed model predictions for dwarfs by Ryan & Reid (2016) for download, which only enabled the creation of Fig. 5. The reported spectroscopy is based on observations obtained at the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF’s NOIRLab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation on behalf of the Gemini Observatory partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), National Research Council (Canada), Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Argentina), Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações (Brazil), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). This paper includes data gathered with the 6.5 m Magellan Telescopes located at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. For photometric calibration, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, PanSTARRS, SkyMapper and 2MASS are acknowledged: Funding for SDSS-III has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, and the US Department of Energy Office of Science. The SDSS-III web site is http://www.sdss3.org/. SDSS-III is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions of the SDSS-III Collaboration including the University of Arizona, the Brazilian Participation Group, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Florida, the French Participation Group, the German Participation Group, Harvard University, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, the Michigan State/Notre Dame/JINA Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, New Mexico State University, New York University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the Spanish Participation Group, University of Tokyo, University of Utah, Vanderbilt University, University of Virginia, University of Washington, and Yale University. The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys (PS1) have been made possible through contributions of the Institute for Astronomy, the University of Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS Project Office, the Max-Planck Society and its participating institutes, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, The Johns Hopkins University, Durham University, the University of Edinburgh, Queen’s University Belfast, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network Incorporated, the National Central University of Taiwan, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant No. NNX08AR22G issued through the Planetary Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate, the National Science Foundation under Grant No. AST-1238877, the University of Maryland, and Eotvos Lorand University (ELTE). The national facility capability for SkyMapper has been funded through ARC LIEF grant LE130100104 from the Australian Research Council, awarded to the University of Sydney, the Australian National University, Swinburne University of Technology, the University of Queensland, the University of Western Australia, the University of Melbourne, Curtin University of Technology, Monash University

PY - 2021/10/31

Y1 - 2021/10/31

N2 - Context. Large-scale surveys over the last years have revealed about 300 quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) at redshifts above 6. Follow-up observations have identified surprising properties, such as the very high black hole (BH) masses, spatial correlations with surrounding cold gas of the host galaxy, and high CIV-MgII » Velocity shifts. In particular, the discovery of luminous high-redshift quasars suggests that at least some BHs likely have high masses at birth and grow efficiently. Aims. Our aim is to quantify quasar pairs at high redshift for a large sample of objects. This provides a new key constraint on a combination of parameters related to the origin and assembly for the most massive BHs: formation efficiency and clustering, growth efficiency, and the relative contribution of BH mergers. Methods. We observed 116 spectroscopically confirmed QSOs around redshift 6 with the simultaneous seven-channel imager Gamma-ray Burst Optical/Near-infrared Detector in order to search for companions. Applying colour-colour cuts identical to those which led to the spectroscopically confirmed QSOs, we performed Le PHARE fits to the 26 best QSO pair candidates, and obtained spectroscopic observations for 11 of them. Results. We do not find any QSO pair with a companion brighter than M1450(AB) < -26 mag within our 0.1-3.3 h-1 cMpc search radius, in contrast to the serendipitous findings in the redshift range 4-5. However, a small fraction of such pairs at this luminosity and redshift is consistent with indications from present-day cosmological-scale galaxy evolution models. In turn, the incidence of L- and T-type brown dwarfs, which occupy a similar colour space to z ∼ 6 QSOs, is higher than expected, by a factor of 5 and 20, respectively.

AB - Context. Large-scale surveys over the last years have revealed about 300 quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) at redshifts above 6. Follow-up observations have identified surprising properties, such as the very high black hole (BH) masses, spatial correlations with surrounding cold gas of the host galaxy, and high CIV-MgII » Velocity shifts. In particular, the discovery of luminous high-redshift quasars suggests that at least some BHs likely have high masses at birth and grow efficiently. Aims. Our aim is to quantify quasar pairs at high redshift for a large sample of objects. This provides a new key constraint on a combination of parameters related to the origin and assembly for the most massive BHs: formation efficiency and clustering, growth efficiency, and the relative contribution of BH mergers. Methods. We observed 116 spectroscopically confirmed QSOs around redshift 6 with the simultaneous seven-channel imager Gamma-ray Burst Optical/Near-infrared Detector in order to search for companions. Applying colour-colour cuts identical to those which led to the spectroscopically confirmed QSOs, we performed Le PHARE fits to the 26 best QSO pair candidates, and obtained spectroscopic observations for 11 of them. Results. We do not find any QSO pair with a companion brighter than M1450(AB) < -26 mag within our 0.1-3.3 h-1 cMpc search radius, in contrast to the serendipitous findings in the redshift range 4-5. However, a small fraction of such pairs at this luminosity and redshift is consistent with indications from present-day cosmological-scale galaxy evolution models. In turn, the incidence of L- and T-type brown dwarfs, which occupy a similar colour space to z ∼ 6 QSOs, is higher than expected, by a factor of 5 and 20, respectively.

KW - Brown dwarfs

KW - Early Universe

KW - Galaxies: active

KW - Quasars: general

KW - Stars: low-mass

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DO - 10.1051/0004-6361/202140790

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JO - Astronomy and Astrophysics

JF - Astronomy and Astrophysics

M1 - A79

ER -

Quasar clustering at redshift 6

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