Web of the giant: Spectroscopic confirmation of a large-scale structure around the <i>z</i> = 6.31 quasar SDSS J1030+0524

Mignoli, M.; Gilli, R.; Decarli, Roberto; Vanzella, E.; Balmaverde, B.; Cappelluti, N.; Cassarà, L. P.; Comastri, A.; Cusano, F.; Iwasawa, K.; Marchesi, S.; Prandoni, I.; Vignali, C.; Vito, F.; Zamorani, G.; Chiaberge, M.; Norman, Colin

doi:10.1051/0004-6361/202039045

Cited by 42 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…However, it remains unclear if quasars reside in overdensities of galaxies. Many works have indeed attempted to characterize the density of galaxies around quasars (mostly through clustering analysis), finding either a galaxy overdensity (Kashikawa et al 2007;Utsumi et al 2010;García-Vergara et al 2017Mignoli et al 2020) or a number density consistent with field samples (Toshikawa et al 2016;Mazzucchelli et al 2017;Uchiyama et al 2019). At z ∼ 5-6 there is growing evidence that quasars can be found in overdensities of emission line or submillimeter galaxies (Decarli et al 2017;Farina et al 2017;Trakhtenbrot et al 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

MUSE analysis of gas around galaxies (MAGG) – III. The gas and galaxy environment of z = 3–4.5 quasars

Fossati

Fumagalli

Lofthouse

et al. 2021

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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We present a study of the environment of 27 z = 3 − 4.5 bright quasars from the MUSE Analysis of Gas around Galaxies (MAGG) survey. With medium-depth MUSE observations (4 hours on target per field), we characterise the effects of quasars on their surroundings by studying simultaneously the properties of extended gas nebulae and Lyα emitters (LAEs) in the quasar host haloes. We detect extended (up to ≈100 kpc) Lyα emission around all MAGG quasars, finding a very weak redshift evolution between z = 3 and z = 6. By stacking the MUSE datacubes, we confidently detect extended emission of C iv and only marginally detect extended He ii up to ≈40 kpc, implying that the gas is metal enriched. Moreover, our observations show a significant overdensity of LAEs within 300 $\rm km~s^{-1}$ from the quasar systemic redshifts estimated from the nebular emission. The luminosity functions and equivalent width distributions of these LAEs show similar shapes with respect to LAEs away from quasars suggesting that the Lyα emission of the majority of these sources is not significantly boosted by the quasar radiation or other processes related to the quasar environment. Within this framework, the observed LAE overdensities and our kinematic measurements imply that bright quasars at z = 3 − 4.5 are hosted by haloes in the mass range $\approx 10^{12.0}-10^{12.5}~\rm M_\odot$.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

MUSE analysis of gas around galaxies (MAGG) – III. The gas and galaxy environment of z = 3–4.5 quasars

Fossati

Fumagalli

Lofthouse

et al. 2021

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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“…X-ray data Nanni et al (2020) reported the results of a ∼479 ks Chandra observation over an area of 335 arcmin 2 in the J1030 field. Such field is centered on the z=6.31 quasar SDSS J1030+0525, which is one of the most massive (M BH >10 9 M ; Kurk et al 2007;De Rosa et al 2011) QSOs detected at z > 6 by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), and the first one to reside in a spectroscopically confirmed overdensity at z > 6 (Mignoli et al 2020).…”

Section: The Chandra J1030 Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…SDSS J1030+0525 is one of the first quasars detected at z > 6 by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS Fan et al 2001). This field is known to be highly biased, since it hosts both a galaxy overdensity at z=6.3, around the SDSS J1030+0525 (Morselli et al 2014;Balmaverde et al 2017;Mignoli et al 2020), and another overdensity at z=1.7, around a Fanaroff-Riley type II (FRII) radio galaxy (Nanni et al 2018;Gilli et al 2019;D'Amato et al 2020). The flux limit achieved by the Chandra J1030 survey (Nanni et al 2020) makes this the fifth deepest X-ray field to date: the survey contains 256 sources detected down to a 0.5-2 keV flux limit f 0.5−2 =6×10 −17 erg s −1 cm −2 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Redshift identification of X-ray selected active galactic nuclei in the J1030 field: searching for large-scale structures and high-redshift sources

Marchesi,

Mignoli,

Gilli

et al. 2021

Preprint

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We publicly release the spectroscopic and photometric redshift catalog of the sources detected with Chandra in the field of the z=6.3 quasar SDSS J1030+0525. This is currently the fifth deepest extragalactic X-ray field, and reaches a 0.5-2 keV flux limit f0.5−2=6×10 −17 erg s −1 cm −2 . By using two independent methods, we measure a photometric redshift for 243 objects, while 123 (51 %) sources also have a spectroscopic redshift, 110 of which coming from an INAF-Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) Strategic Program. We use the spectroscopic redshifts to determine the quality of the photometric ones, and find it in agreement with that of other X-ray surveys which used a similar number of photometric data-points. In particular, we measure a sample normalized median absolute deviation σNMAD=1.48×median(||z phot -zspec||/(1+zspec))=0.065. We use these new spectroscopic and photometric redshifts to study the properties of the Chandra J1030 field. We observe several peaks in our spectroscopic redshift distribution between z=0.15 and z=1.5, and find that the sources in each peak are often distributed across the whole Chandra field of view. This confirms that X-ray selected AGN can efficiently track large-scale structures over physical scales of several Mpc. Finally, we computed the Chandra J1030 z > 3 number counts: while the spectroscopic completeness at high-redshift of our sample is limited, our results point towards a potential source excess at z ≥4, which we plan to either confirm or reject in the near future with dedicated spectroscopic campaigns.

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“…It has thus been expected that these luminous quasars will be situated in or near large overdensities of dark matter, gas and galaxies that, in principle, we should be able to detect. Precisely this expectation has been tested for the last two decades in many different and complementary ways, but it has been challenging to interpret that work in a straightforward and clear-cut way (see, e.g., Overzier et al 2009a;Overzier 2016;Mazzucchelli et al 2017;Decarli et al 2017;Mignoli et al 2020, and references therein for a variety of observational findings related to the environments of quasars).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conditions for direct black hole seed collapse near a radio-loud quasar 1 Gyr after the Big Bang

Overzier

2021

Preprint

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Observations of luminous quasars and their supermassive black holes at z 6 suggest that they formed at dense matter peaks in the early universe. However, few studies have found definitive evidence that the quasars lie at cosmic density peaks, in clear contrast with theory predictions. Here we present new evidence that the radio-loud quasar SDSS J0836+0054 at z = 5.8 could be part of a surprisingly rich structure of galaxies. This conclusion is reached by combining a number of findings previously reported in the literature. Bosman et al. ( 2020) obtained the redshifts of three companion galaxies, confirming an overdensity of i 775 -dropouts found by Zheng et al. (2006). By comparing this structure with those found near other quasars and large overdense regions in the field at z ∼ 6 − 7, we show that the SDSS J0836+0054 field is among the densest structures known at these redshifts. One of the spectroscopic companions is a very massive star-forming galaxy (log 10 (M /M ) = 10.3 +0.3 −0.2 ) based on its unambiguous detection in a Spitzer 3.6 µm image. This suggests that the quasar field hosts not one, but at least two rare, massive dark matter halos (log 10 (M h /M ) 12), corresponding to a galaxy overdensity of at least 20. We discuss the properties of the young radio source. We conclude that the environment of SDSS J0836+0054 resembles, at least qualitatively, the type of conditions that may have spurred the direct collapse of a massive black hole seed according to recent theory.

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Web of the giant: Spectroscopic confirmation of a large-scale structure around the z = 6.31 quasar SDSS J1030+0524

Cited by 42 publications

References 38 publications

MUSE analysis of gas around galaxies (MAGG) – III. The gas and galaxy environment of z = 3–4.5 quasars

MUSE analysis of gas around galaxies (MAGG) – III. The gas and galaxy environment of z = 3–4.5 quasars

Redshift identification of X-ray selected active galactic nuclei in the J1030 field: searching for large-scale structures and high-redshift sources

Conditions for direct black hole seed collapse near a radio-loud quasar 1 Gyr after the Big Bang

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