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The Pan-STARRS1 Distant z > 5.6 Quasar Survey: More than 100 Quasars within the First Gyr of the Universe

Bañados, E.; Venemans, B.P.; Decarli, R.; Farina, E.P.; Mazzucchelli, C.; Walter, F.; Fan, X.; Stern, D.; Schlafly, E.; Chambers, K.C.; Rix, H.-W.; Jiang, L.; McGreer, I.; Simcoe, R.; Wang, F.; Yang, J.; Morganson, E.; De Rosa, G.; Greiner, J.; Baloković, M.; Burgett, W.S.; Cooper, T.; Draper, P.W.; Flewelling, H.; Hodapp, K.W.; Jun, H.D.; Kaiser, N.; Kudritzki, R.-P.; Magnier, E.A.; Metcalfe, N.; Miller, D.; Schindler, J.-T.; Tonry, J.L.; Wainscoat, R.J.; Waters, C.; Yang, Q.

The Pan-STARRS1 Distant z > 5.6 Quasar Survey: More than 100 Quasars within the First Gyr of the Universe Thumbnail


Authors

E. Bañados

B.P. Venemans

R. Decarli

E.P. Farina

C. Mazzucchelli

F. Walter

X. Fan

D. Stern

E. Schlafly

K.C. Chambers

H.-W. Rix

L. Jiang

I. McGreer

R. Simcoe

F. Wang

J. Yang

E. Morganson

G. De Rosa

J. Greiner

M. Baloković

W.S. Burgett

T. Cooper

P.W. Draper

H. Flewelling

K.W. Hodapp

H.D. Jun

N. Kaiser

R.-P. Kudritzki

E.A. Magnier

D. Miller

J.-T. Schindler

J.L. Tonry

R.J. Wainscoat

C. Waters

Q. Yang



Abstract

Luminous quasars at $z\gt 5.6$ can be studied in detail with the current generation of telescopes and provide us with unique information on the first gigayear of the universe. Thus far, these studies have been statistically limited by the number of quasars known at these redshifts. Such quasars are rare, and therefore, wide-field surveys are required to identify them, and multiwavelength data are required to separate them efficiently from their main contaminants, the far more numerous cool dwarfs. In this paper, we update and extend the selection for the $z\sim 6$ quasars presented in Bañados et al. (2014) using the Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) survey. We present the PS1 distant quasar sample, which currently consists of 124 quasars in the redshift range $5.6\lesssim z\lesssim 6.7$ that satisfy our selection criteria. Of these quasars, 77 have been discovered with PS1, and 63 of them are newly identified in this paper. We present the composite spectra of the PS1 distant quasar sample. This sample spans a factor of ~20 in luminosity and shows a variety of emission line properties. The number of quasars at $z\gt 5.6$ presented in this work almost doubles the previously known quasars at these redshifts, marking a transition phase from studies of individual sources to statistical studies of the high-redshift quasar population, which was impossible with earlier, smaller samples.

Citation

Bañados, E., Venemans, B., Decarli, R., Farina, E., Mazzucchelli, C., Walter, F., …Yang, Q. (2016). The Pan-STARRS1 Distant z > 5.6 Quasar Survey: More than 100 Quasars within the First Gyr of the Universe. Astrophysical Journal Supplement, 227(1), Article 11. https://doi.org/10.3847/0067-0049/227/1/11

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Aug 3, 2016
Online Publication Date Nov 14, 2016
Publication Date Nov 14, 2016
Deposit Date Feb 27, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 7, 2017
Journal Astrophysical Journal Supplement
Print ISSN 0067-0049
Electronic ISSN 1538-4365
Publisher American Astronomical Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 227
Issue 1
Article Number 11
DOI https://doi.org/10.3847/0067-0049/227/1/11
Related Public URLs https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.03279

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Copyright Statement
© 2016. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved





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