The Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey: The Environments of High-z SDSS Quasi-stellar Objects

Creators: Falder, J. T.; Stevens, J. A.; Jarvis, Matt J.; Bonfield, D. G.; Lacy, M.; Farrah, D.; Oliver, S.; Surace, J.; Mauduit, J.-C.; Vaccari, M.; Marchetti, L.; González-Solares, E.; Afonso, J.; Cava, A.; Seymour, N.

Abstract

This paper presents a study of the environments of SDSS quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) in the Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey (SERVS). We concentrate on the high-redshift QSOs as these have not been studied in large numbers with data of this depth before. We use the IRAC 3.6-4.5 μm color of objects and ancillary r-band data to filter out as much foreground contamination as possible. This technique allows us to find a significant (>4σ) overdensity of galaxies around QSOs in a redshift bin centered on z ~ 2.0 and an (>2σ) overdensity of galaxies around QSOs in a redshift bin centered on z ~ 3.3. We compare our findings to the predictions of a semi-analytic galaxy formation model, based on the ΛCDM MILLENNIUM simulation, and find for both redshift bins that the model predictions match well the source density we have measured from the SERVS data.

Additional Information

© 2011 American Astronomical Society. Received 2010 November 29; accepted 2011 April 22; published 2011 June 24. We thank the anonymous referee for comments that improved the paper. This work is based (in part) on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA. Support for this work was provided by NASA through an award issued by JPL/Caltech. J.T.F. thanks the Science and Technology Facilities Council for a research studentship. J.A. gratefully acknowledges the support from the Science and Technology Foundation (FCT, Portugal) through the research grant PTDC/FIS/100170/2008.

Attached Files

Published - Falder2011p14659Astrophys_J.pdf

Files

Falder2011p14659Astrophys_J.pdf

Files (789.0 kB)

Name	Size	Download all
Falder2011p14659Astrophys_J.pdf md5:202cedf3a5c57492e61f94db668d7fe4	789.0 kB	Preview Download

Additional details

	All versions	This version
Views	0	0
Downloads	0	0
Data volume	0 Bytes	0 Bytes