The Near and Mid-infrared photometric properties of known redshift $z\ge 5$ Quasars

Abstract

We assemble a catalogue of 488 spectroscopically confirmed very high ($z\ge 5.00$) redshift quasars and report their near- ($ZYJH{K}_s/K$) and mid- (WISE W1234) infrared properties. 97\% of the VH$z$Q sample is detected in one or more NIR ($ZYJHK/K_s$) band, with lack of coverage rather than lack of depth being the reason for the non-detections. 389 (80\%) of the very high redshift quasars are detected at 3.4$\mu$m in the W1 band from the unWISE catalog and all of the $z\ge 7$ quasars are detected in both unWISE W1 and W2. Using archival WFCAM/UKIRT and VIRCAM/VISTA data we check for photometric variability that might be expected from super-Eddington accretion. We find 28 of the quasars have sufficient NIR measurements and signal-to-noise ratio to look for variability. Weak variability was detected in multiple bands of SDSS J0959+0227, and very marginally in the $Y$-band of MMT J0215-0529. Only one quasar, SDSS J0349+0034, shows significant differences between WFCAM and VISTA magnitudes in one band. With supermassive black hole accretion likely to be redshift invariant up to very high-redshift, further monitoring of these sources is warranted. All the data, analysis codes and plots used and generated here can be found at: https://github.com/d80b2t/VHzQ}{\tt github.com/d80b2t/VHzQ.

Published in MNRAS, 2020, Vol. 494, pp.789-803. 15 pages; 12 figures; 6 tables. Databases available at WFCAM Science Archive and the VISTA Science Archive. All data, analysis codes and plots can be found at github.com/d80b2t/VHzQ. Play the Five Tones

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