The Faint End of the Quasar Luminosity Function at z ~ 4: Implications for Ionization of the Intergalactic Medium and Cosmic Downsizing
Abstract
We present an updated determination of the z ~ 4 QSO luminosity function (QLF), improving the quality of the determination of the faint end of the QLF presented by Glikman et al. (2010). We have observed an additional 43 candidates from our survey sample, yielding one additional QSO at z = 4.23 and increasing the completeness of our spectroscopic follow-up to 48% for candidates brighter than R = 24 over our survey area of 3.76 deg^2. We study the effect of using K-corrections to compute the rest-frame absolute magnitude at 1450 Å compared with measuring M_(1450) directly from the object spectra. We find a luminosity-dependent bias: template-based K-corrections overestimate the luminosity of low-luminosity QSOs, likely due to their reliance on templates derived from higher luminosity QSOs. Combining our sample with bright quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and using spectrum-based M 1450 for all the quasars, we fit a double power law to the binned QLF. Our best fit has a bright-end slope, α = 3.3 ± 0.2, and faint-end slope, β = 1.6^(+0.8)_(–0.6). Our new data revise the faint-end slope of the QLF down to flatter values similar to those measured at z ~ 3. The break luminosity, though poorly constrained, is at M* = –24.1^(+0.7)_(–1.9), approximately 1-1.5 mag fainter than at z ~ 3. This QLF implies that QSOs account for about half the radiation needed to ionize the intergalactic medium at these redshifts.
Additional Information
© 2011 American Astronomical Society. Received 2010 November 15; accepted 2010 December 22; published 2011 January 25. The data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. We thank Gordon Richards for useful discussions on combining the SDSS and our QLFs, and Meg Urry for helpful comments. We are grateful to the staff of W. M. Keck observatory for their assistance during our observing runs. This work was supported in part by the NSF grants AST-0407448 and AST-0909182, and by the Ajax foundation. The work of D.S. was carried out at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. The research activities of A.D. and B.T.J. are supported by the NSF through its funding of the NOAO, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under a cooperative agreement with the NSF. This work makes use of image data from the NDWFS and the DLS as distributed by the NOAO Science Archive. K.S.L. gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Gilbert and Jaylee Mead for their namesake fellowship.Attached Files
Published - Glikman2011p13019Astrophys_J_Lett.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 22859
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20110314-113209420
- NSF
- AST-0407448
- NSF
- AST-0909182
- Ajax Foundation
- National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO)
- Gilbert and Jaylee Mead
- Created
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2011-03-15Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field