X-ray properties of z>6.5 quasars

Abstract

We present XMM-Newton X-ray observations and analysis of three DES $z>6.5$ quasars (VDES J0020$-$3653 at $z=6.824$, VDES J0244$-$5008 at $z=6.724$ and VDES J0224$-$4711 at $z=6.526$) and six other quasars with $6.438<z<6.747$ from the XMM-Newton public archive. Two of the nine quasars are detected at a high ($>$4$\sigma$) significance level: VDES J0224$-$4711(z=6.53) at $9\sigma$ and PSO J159$-$02 ($z=6.38$) at $8\sigma$. They have a photon index of $\Gamma =1.82_{-0.27}^{+0.29}$ and $\Gamma =1.94_{-0.29}^{+0.31}$ respectively, which is consistent with the mean value of $\sim 1.9$ found for quasars at all redshifts. The rest-frame $2-10$ keV luminosity of VDES J0224$-$4711, is $L_{2-10\mathrm{keV}}=(2.92\pm 0.43)\times 10^{45}\mathrm{erg}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$, which makes this quasar one of the most X-ray luminous quasars at $z>5.5$ and the most X-ray luminous quasar at $z>6.5$, with a luminosity 6 times and 2.5 times larger than ULAS J1120+0641 ($z=7.08$) and ULAS J1342+0928 ($z=7.54$) respectively. The X-ray-to-optical power-law slopes of the nine quasars are consistent with the previously observed anti-correlation of ${\alpha }_{ox}$ with UV luminosity $L_{2500\mathring{\mathrm{A}}}$. We find no evidence for evolution of ${\alpha }_{ox}$ with redshift when the anti-correlation with UV luminosity is taken into account. Similar to previous studies at z$\sim$6 we have found remarkably consistent X-ray spectral properties between low (z$\sim$1) and high-redshift quasars. Our results add further evidence to the picture that the observable properties of high luminosity quasars over the UV to X-ray spectral region have not evolved significantly from $z\sim 7$ to the present day and that quasars comparable to local versions existed 800 million years after the big bang.

8 pages; resubmitted to MNRAS

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