A survey for low luminosity quasars at redshift z~5

Abstract

We present the results of a multi-colour (VIZ) survey for low luminosity (M_B<-23.5) quasars with z~5 using the 12K CCD mosaic camera on CFHT. The survey covers 1.8deg^2 to a limiting magnitude of m_z=22.5(Vega), about two magnitudes fainter than the SDSS quasar survey. 20 candidates were selected by their VIZ colours and spectra for 15 of these were obtained with GMOS on the Gemini North telescope. A single quasar with z=4.99 was recovered, the remaining candidates are all M stars. The detection of only a single quasar in the redshift range accessible to the survey (4.8<5.2) is indicative of a possible turn over in the luminosity function at faint quasar magnitudes, and a departure from the form observed at higher luminosities (in agreement with quasar lensing observations by Richards etal (2003)). However, the derived space densitys, of quasars more luminous than M_B(Vega)<-23.5, of 2.96x10^-7 Mpc^-3 is consistent at the 65% confidence level with extrapolation of the quasar luminosity function as derived by Fan etal (2001a) at m_i<19.6(Vega).

8 Pages, 8 Figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (4)

• A Survey of z>5.7 Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey II: Discovery of Three Additional Quasars at z>6
• The missing M dwarfs
• Reddening-Independent Quasar Selection from a Wide-Field Optical and Near-IR Imaging Survey
• The BTC40 Survey for Quasars at 4.8 < z < 6

Cited by in corpus (4)

• The Discovery of Three New z>5 Quasars in the AGN and Galaxy Evolution Survey
• First results from the Canada-France High-z Quasar Survey: Constraints on the z=6 quasar luminosity function and the quasar contribution to reionization
• On the faint end of the high redshift AGN luminosity function
• Discovery of an Optically-Faint Quasar at z=5.70 and Implications for the Faint End of the Quasar Luminosity Function