Dust emission and star formation toward a redshift 5.5 QSO

Abstract

We report observations of the low-luminosity z = 5.50 quasar RD J030117+002025 (RD0301 hereafter) at 250 GHz (1.20mm) using the Max-Planck Millimeter Bolometer (MAMBO) array at the IRAM 30-meter telescope. The quasar was detected with a 1.2mm flux density of 0.87 +-0.20 mJy. The lack of detectable 1.4 GHz radio emission indicates that the millimeter emission is of thermal nature, making RD0301 the most distant dust-emission source known. When matching a 50K grey body thermal far-infrared (FIR) spectrum to the observed millimeter flux we imply a FIR luminosity ~4x10^12 L_sun, which is comparable to the quasar's optical luminosity. If the FIR luminosity arises from massive star formation, the implied star formation rate would be ~600 M_sun/yr, comparable to that of the starburst galaxies which dominate the average star formation and FIR emission in the early Universe. The FIR luminosity of RD0301 is close to the average of that found in optically far more luminous high-redshift quasars. The comparably high millimeter to optical brightness ratio of RD0301 is further evidence for that there is no strong correlation between the optical and millimeter brightness of high-redshift quasars, supporting the idea that in high-redshift quasars the dust is not heated by the AGN, but by starbursts.

4 pages, 2 figures, accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters

References in corpus (11)

• A Survey of z>5.8 Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey I: Discovery of Three New Quasars and the Spatial Density of Luminous Quasars at z~6
• Evidence for Reionization at z ~ 6: Detection of a Gunn-Peterson Trough in a z=6.28 Quasar
• On the Threshold of the Reionization Epoch
• A 1.2mm MAMBO/IRAM-30m Survey of Dust Emission from the Highest Redshift PSS Quasars
• A 250 GHz Survey of High Redshift QSOs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The SCUBA Bright Quasar Survey (SBQS): 850micron observations of the z>4 sample
• High-Redshift Quasars Found in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Commissioning Data VI. Sloan Digital Sky Survey Spectrograph Observations
• Submillimeter Evidence for the Coeval Growth of Massive Black Holes and Galaxy Bulges
• CO and Dust in PSS2322+1944 at a redshift of 4.12
• Radio Observations of Infrared Luminous High Redshift QSOs
• First results from the Isaac Newton Telescope Wide Angle Survey: The z>5 quasar survey

Cited by in corpus (21)

• Dust emission from the most distant quasars
• Stellar sources of dust in the high redshift Universe
• Production of dust by massive stars at high redshift
• Dust Formation in Very Massive Primordial Supernovae
• A 1.2mm MAMBO/IRAM-30m Study of Dust Emission from optically luminous z~2 Quasars
• Quasars as probes of the submillimetre cosmos at z>5: I. Preliminary SCUBA photometry
• Genesis and evolution of dust in galaxies in the early Universe I. Modeling dust evolution in starburst galaxies
• Sensitive observations at 1.4 and 250 GHz of z > 5 QSOs
• The Contribution of Host Galaxies to the Infrared Energy Output of $z\gtrsim 5.0$ QUASARS
• The visibility of Lyman Alpha Emitters: constraining reionization, ionizing photons and dust
• Discovery of an Optically-Faint Quasar at z=5.70 and Implications for the Faint End of the Quasar Luminosity Function
• Lessons from cosmic history: The case for a linear star formation -- H2 relation
• Submillimetre observations of a sample of broad absorption line quasars
• The dustiest Post-Main sequence stars in the Magellanic Clouds
• The Growth of Black Holes and Their Host Spheroids in (Sub)mm-loud QSOs at High Redshift
• A Direct Upper Limit on the Density of Cosmological Dust from the Absence of an X-ray Scattering Halo around the z=4.3 QSO 1508+5714
• Dust composition and mass-loss return from the luminous blue variable R71 in the LMC
• The AGN fraction of submm-selected galaxies and contributions to the submm/mm-wave extragalactic background light
• Near-Infrared Photometry of the High-Redshift Quasar RDJ030117+002025: Evidence for a Massive Starburst at z=5.5
• Massive Star Cluster Populations in Irregulars as Probable Younger Counterparts of Old Metal-Rich Globular Cluster Populations in Spheroids
• Old Metal-rich Globular Cluster Populations: Peak Color and Peak Metallicity Trends with Mass of Host Spheroids