Bibcode
DOI
Fan, Xiaohui; Strauss, Michael A.; Schneider, Donald P.; Becker, Robert H.; White, Richard L.; Haiman, Zoltán; Gregg, Michael; Pentericci, Laura; Grebel, Eva K.; Narayanan, Vijay K.; Loh, Yeong-Shang; Richards, Gordon T.; Gunn, James E.; Lupton, Robert H.; Knapp, Gillian R.; Ivezić, Željko; Brandt, W. N.; Collinge, Matthew; Hao, Lei; Harbeck, Daniel; Prada, Francisco; Schaye, Joop; Strateva, Iskra; Zakamska, Nadia; Anderson, Scott; Brinkmann, Jon; Bahcall, Neta A.; Lamb, Don Q.; Okamura, Sadanori; Szalay, Alex; York, Donald G.
Bibliographical reference
The Astronomical Journal, Volume 125, Issue 4, pp. 1649-1659.
Advertised on:
4
2003
Citations
743
Refereed citations
633
Description
We present the discovery of three new quasars at z>6 in ~ 1300
deg2 of Sloan Digital Sky Survey imaging data,
J114816.64+525150.3 (z=6.43), J104845.05+463718.3 (z=6.23), and
J163033.90+401209.6 (z=6.05). The first two objects have weak Lyα
emission lines; their redshifts are determined from the positions of the
Lyman break. They are only accurate to ~0.05 and could be affected by
the presence of broad absorption line systems. The last object has a
Lyα strength more typical of lower redshift quasars. Based on a
sample of six quasars at z>5.7 that cover 2870 deg2
presented in this paper and in Paper I, we estimate the comoving density
of luminous quasars at z~6 and M1450<-26.8 to be
(8+/-3)×10-10 Mpc-3 (for H0=50 km
s-1 Mpc-1, Ω=1). Hubble Space Telescope
imaging of two z>5.7 quasars and high-resolution, ground-based images
(seeing ~0.4") of three additional z>5.7 quasars show that none of
them is gravitationally lensed. The luminosity distribution of the
high-redshift quasar sample suggests the bright-end slope of the quasar
luminosity function at z~6 is shallower than Ψ~L-3.5 (2
σ), consistent with the absence of strongly lensed objects.
Based on observations obtained with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and
with the Apache Point Observatory 3.5 m telescope, which is owned and
operated by the Astrophysical Research Consortium; on observations
obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a
scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the
University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, made possible by the generous financial support of the
W. M. Keck Foundation; on observations obtained with the Hobby-Eberly
Telescope, which is a joint project of the University of Texas at
Austin, the Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University,
Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität München, and
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and based on observations
in the framework of the ``Calar Alto Key Project for SDSS Follow-up
Observations'' (Grebel 2001), obtained at the German-Spanish
Astronomical Centre, Calar Alto Observatory, operated by the
Max-Planck-Institute für Astronomie, Heidelberg, jointly with the
Spanish National Commission for Astronomy.