Tracing high redshift cosmic web with quasar systems

Abstract

We trace the cosmic web at redshifts 1.0 <= z <= 1.8 using the quasar data from the SDSS DR7 QSO catalogue (Schneider et al. 2010). We apply a friend-of-friend (FoF) algorithm to the quasar and random catalogues to determine systems at a series of linking lengths, and analyse richness and sizes of these systems. At the linking lengths l <= 30 Mpc/h the number of quasar systems is larger than the number of systems detected in random catalogues, and systems themselves have smaller diameters than random systems. The diameters of quasar systems are comparable to the sizes of poor galaxy superclusters in the local Universe, the richest quasar systems have four members. The mean space density of quasar systems is close to the mean space density of local rich superclusters. At intermediate linking lengths (40 <= l <= 70 Mpc/h) the richness and length of quasar systems are similar to those derived from random catalogues. Quasar system diameters are similar to the sizes of rich superclusters and supercluster chains in the local Universe. At the linking length 70 Mpc/h the richest systems of quasars have diameters exceeding 500 Mpc/h. The percolating system which penetrate the whole sample volume appears in quasar sample at smaller linking length than in random samples (85 Mpc/h). Quasar luminosities in systems are not correlated with the system richness. Quasar system catalogues at our web pages http://www.aai.ee/~maret/QSOsystems.html serve as a database to search for superclusters of galaxies and to trace the cosmic web at high redshifts.

10 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics

References in corpus (15)

• Clustering of High Redshift ($z\ge 2.9$) Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Observations of Redshift Evolution in Large Scale Environments (ORELSE) Survey : I. The Survey Design and First Results on Cl 0023+0423 at z = 0.84 and RX J1821.6+6827 at z = 0.82
• Groups of galaxies in the SDSS Data Release 5. A group-finder and a catalogue
• The primordial environment of super massive black holes: large scale galaxy overdensities around $z\sim 6$ QSOs with LBT
• The Angular Clustering of Infrared-Selected Obscured and Unobscured Quasars
• Central and Satellite Colors in Galaxy Groups: A Comparison of the Halo Model and SDSS Group Catalogs
• Properties of galaxies in SDSS Quasar environments at z < 0.2
• The discovery of a massive supercluster at z=0.9 in the UKIDSS DXS
• QSO-LRG 2-Point Cross-Correlation Function and Redshift-Space Distorions
• A z=0.9 supercluster of X-ray luminous, optically-selected, massive galaxy clusters
• Chandra Observations of the Cl1604 Supercluster at z=0.9: Evidence for an Overdensity of Active Galactic Nuclei
• Mass, Light and Colour of the Cosmic Web in the Supercluster SCL2243-0935 (z=0.447)
• Low redshift quasars in the SDSS Stripe 82. The local environments
• Properties of Galaxies Hosting X-ray Selected Active Galactic Nuclei in the Cl1604 Supercluster at z=0.9
• Environments of QSOs at Redshifts 0.9 to 1.3

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Alignment of quasar polarizations with large-scale structures
• Large-Scale Fluctuations in the Number Density of Galaxies in Independent Surveys of Deep Fields