DES J0454-4448: discovery of the first luminous z 6 quasar from the Dark Energy Survey uri icon

abstract

  • 2015 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. We present the first results of a survey for high-redshift, z 6, quasars using izY multicolour photometric observations from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). Here we report the discovery and spectroscopic confirmation of the zAB, YAB = 20.2, 20.2 (M1450 = -26.5) quasar DES J0454-4448 with a redshift of z = 6.090.02 based on the onset of the Ly forest and an H I near zone size of 4.1-1.2+1.1 proper Mpc. The quasar was selected as an i-band drop out with i-z = 2.46 and zAB < 21.5 from an area of ~300 deg2. It is the brightest of our 43 candidates and was identified for spectroscopic follow-up solely based on the DES i-z and z-Y colours. The quasar is detected by WISE and has W1AB = 19.68. The discovery of one spectroscopically confirmed quasar with 5.7 < z < 6.5 and zAB = 20.2 is consistent with recent determinations of the luminosity function at z ~ 6. DES when completed will have imaged ~5000 deg2 to YAB = 23.0 (5 point source) and we expect to discover 50-100 new quasars with z > 6 including 3-10 with z > 7 dramatically increasing the numbers of quasars currently known that are suitable for detailed studies.

published proceedings

  • MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY

altmetric score

  • 1.5

author list (cited authors)

  • Reed, S. L., McMahon, R. G., Banerji, M., Becker, G. D., Gonzalez-Solares, E., Martini, P., ... Wechsler, R. H.

citation count

  • 63

complete list of authors

  • Reed, SL||McMahon, RG||Banerji, M||Becker, GD||Gonzalez-Solares, E||Martini, P||Ostrovski, F||Rauch, M||Abbott, T||Abdalla, FB||Allam, S||Benoit-Levy, A||Bertin, E||Buckley-Geer, E||Burke, D||Rosell, A Carnero||da Costa, LN||D'Andrea, C||DePoy, DL||Desai, S||Diehl, HT||Doel, P||Cunha, CE||Estrada, J||Evrard, AE||Neto, A Fausti||Finley, DA||Fosalba, P||Frieman, J||Gruen, D||Honscheid, K||James, D||Kent, S||Kuehn, K||Kuropatkin, N||Lahav, O||Maia, MAG||Makler, M||Marshall, J||Merritt, K||Miquel, R||Mohr, J||Nord, B||Ogando, R||Plazas, A||Romer, K||Roodman, A||Rykoff, E||Sako, M||Sanchez, E||Santiago, B||Schubnell, M||Sevilla, I||Smith, C||Soares-Santos, M||Suchyta, E||Swanson, MEC||Tarle, G||Thomas, D||Tucker, D||Walker, A||Wechsler, RH

publication date

  • December 2015