Luminous high-redshift quasars can be used to probe of the intergalactic medium (IGM) in the early universe because their UV light is absorbed by the neutral hydrogen along the line of sight. They help us to measure the neutral hydrogen fraction of the high-z universe, shedding light on the end of reionization epoch. In this paper, we present a discovery of a new quasar (PSO J006.1240+39.2219) at redshift z=6.61±0.02 from Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System 1. Including this quasar, there are nine quasars above z>6.5 up to date. The estimated continuum brightness is M1450=−25.96±0.08. PSO J006.1240+39.2219 has a strong Ly~α emission compared with typical low-redshift quasars, but the measured near-zone region size is RNZ=3.2±1.1 proper megaparsecs, which is consistent with other quasars at z∼6.
@article{arxiv.1612.06148,
title = {A Quasar Discovered at redshift 6.6 from Pan-STARRS1},
author = {Ji-Jia Tang and Tomotsugu Goto and Youichi Ohyama and Wen-Ping Chen and Fabian Walter and Bram Venemans and Kenneth C. Chambers and Eduardo Banados and Roberto Decarli and Xiaohui Fan and Emanuele Farina and Chiara Mazzucchelli and Nick Kaiser and Eugene A. Magnier},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.06148},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 5 pages including 5 figures and 3 tables