English

A Deep Chandra X-ray Survey of a Luminous Quasar Sample at $z\sim$ 7

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2025-12-04 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

We present new Chandra observations of seven luminous quasars at z>6.5z>6.5. Combined with archival Chandra observations of all other known quasars, they form nearly complete X-ray observations of all currently known z7z\sim7 quasars with M1450<26.5M_{1450}<-26.5, except for J0313-1806 at z=7.642z=7.642 and J0910-0414 at z=6.636z=6.636. Together with existing ground-based NIR spectroscopy and ALMA observations, we investigate the correlations between X-ray emission (the X-ray luminosity LXL_{\rm X} and the optical/UV-to-X-ray spectral slope αOX\alpha_{\rm OX}) and various quasar properties (rest-UV luminosity L2500 A˚L_{\mathrm{2500\ \mathring{A}}}, bolometric luminosity LbolL_{\rm bol}, C IV blueshift, and infrared luminosity LIRL_{\rm IR}). We find most z>6.5z>6.5 quasars follow a similar αOXL2500 A˚\alpha_{\rm OX}-L_{\mathrm{2500\ \mathring{A}}} relation as z16z\sim1-6 quasars, but also display a large scatter. We find a potential correlation between αOX\alpha_{\rm OX} and the C IV blueshift, suggesting a soft optical/UV-to-X-ray SED shape is frequently associated with fast disk winds. Furthermore, we analyze the X-ray spectrum of 11 quasars at z>6.5z>6.5 with Chandra detection, and find the best-fit photon index Γ\Gamma is 2.41±0.272.41\pm0.27, which is likely driven by high accretion rates of z>6.5z>6.5 quasars. In addition, we find there are no significant correlations between either LXL_{\rm X} and LIRL_{\rm IR}, nor LbolL_{\rm bol} and LIRL_{\rm IR}, suggesting no strong correlations between quasar luminosity and star formation luminosity for the most luminous quasars at z>6.5z>6.5.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.03433,
  title  = {A Deep Chandra X-ray Survey of a Luminous Quasar Sample at $z\sim$ 7},
  author = {Xiangyu Jin and Feige Wang and Jinyi Yang and Xiaohui Fan and Fuyan Bian and Jiang-Tao Li and Weizhe Liu and Yichen Liu and Jianwei Lyu and Maria Pudoka and Wei Leong Tee and Yunjing Wu and Haowen Zhang and Yongda Zhu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.03433},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

17 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ