Quasar Luminosity Function at z = 7

Autor: Matsuoka, Yoshiki, Onoue, Masafusa, Iwasawa, Kazushi, Strauss, Michael A., Kashikawa, Nobunari, Izumi, Takuma, Nagao, Tohru, Imanishi, Masatoshi, Akiyama, Masayuki, Silverman, John D., Asami, Naoko, Bosch, James, Furusawa, Hisanori, Goto, Tomotsugu, Gunn, James E., Harikane, Yuichi, Ikeda, Hiroyuki, Inayoshi, Kohei, Ishimoto, Rikako, Kawaguchi, Toshihiro, Kikuta, Satoshi, Kohno, Kotaro, Komiyama, Yutaka, Lee, Chien-Hsiu, Lupton, Robert H., Minezaki, Takeo, Miyazaki, Satoshi, Murayama, Hitoshi, Nishizawa, Atsushi J., Oguri, Masamune, Ono, Yoshiaki, Oogi, Taira, Ouchi, Masami, Price, Paul A., Sameshima, Hiroaki, Sugiyama, Naoshi, Tait, Philip J., Takada, Masahiro, Takahashi, Ayumi, Takata, Tadafumi, Tanaka, Masayuki, Toba, Yoshiki, Wang, Shiang-Yu, Yamashita, Takuji
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Druh dokumentu: Working Paper
DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/acd69f
Popis: We present the quasar luminosity function (LF) at $z = 7$, measured with 35 spectroscopically confirmed quasars at $6.55 < z < 7.15$. The sample of 22 quasars from the Subaru High-$z$ Exploration of Low-Luminosity Quasars (SHELLQs) project, combined with 13 brighter quasars in the literature, covers an unprecedentedly wide range of rest-frame ultraviolet magnitudes over $-28 < M_{1450} < -23$. We found that the binned LF flattens significantly toward the faint end populated by the SHELLQs quasars. A maximum likelihood fit to a double power-law model has a break magnitude $M^*_{1450} = -25.60^{+0.40}_{-0.30}$, a characteristic density $\Phi^* = 1.35^{+0.47}_{-0.30}$ Gpc$^{-3}$ mag$^{-1}$, and a bright-end slope $\beta = -3.34^{+0.49}_{-0.57}$, when the faint-end slope is fixed to $\alpha = -1.2$ as observed at $z \le 6$. The overall LF shape remains remarkably similar from $z = 4$ to $7$, while the amplitude decreases substantially toward higher redshifts, with a clear indication of an accelerating decline at $z \ge 6$. The estimated ionizing photon density, $10^{48.2 \pm 0.1}$ s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-3}$, is less than 1 % of the critical rate to keep the intergalactic medium ionized at $z = 7$, and thus indicates that quasars are not a major contributor to cosmic reionization.
Comment: The Astrophysical Journal Letters, in press
Databáze: arXiv