Quasar UV Luminosity Function at $3.5<z<5.0$ from SDSS Deep Imaging Data

Abstract

We present a well-designed sample of more than 1000 type 1 quasars at $3.5<z<5$ and derive UV quasar luminosity functions (QLFs) in this redshift range. These quasars were selected using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) imaging data in SDSS Stripe 82 and overlap regions with repeat imaging observations. They are about one magnitude fainter than those found using the SDSS single-epoch data. The spectroscopic observations were conducted by the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) as one of the BOSS ancillary programs. This quasar sample reaches $i\sim 21.5$ mag and bridges previous samples from brighter surveys and deeper surveys. We use a $1/V_{\mathrm{a}}$ method to derive binned QLFs at $3.6<z<4.0$, $4.0<z<4.5$, and $4.5<z<4.9$, and use a double-power law model to parameterize the QLFs. We also combine our data with those in the literature to better constrain the QLFs in the context of a much wider luminosity baseline. We find that the faint-end and bright-end slopes of the QLFs in this redshift range are around $-1.7$ and $-3.7$, respectively, with uncertainties from 0.2$-$0.3 to $>0.5$. The evolution of the QLFs from $z\sim 5$ to $3.5$ can be described by a pure density evolution model ($\propto 10^{kz}$) and the parameter $k$ is similar to that at $5<z<7$, suggesting a nearly uniform evolution of the quasar density at $z=3.5-7$.

Submitted to ApJ

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