Measuring large-scale structure with quasars in narrow-band filter surveys

TL;DR

A narrow-band optical survey can effectively detect quasars with high density and redshift accuracy, enabling detailed large-scale structure measurements and baryon acoustic oscillation studies at high redshifts.

Contribution

This paper demonstrates the potential of narrow-band surveys like J-PAS to use quasars as tracers for large-scale structure and BAO measurements at high redshifts.

Findings

High quasar density achievable at z~1.5 with faint detection limits.

Photometric redshifts for quasars can reach b4z~0.002(1+z).

Potential for precision power spectrum and BAO measurements at z~3-4.

Abstract

We show that a large-area imaging survey using narrow-band filters could detect quasars in sufficiently high number densities, and with more than sufficient accuracy in their photometric redshifts, to turn them into suitable tracers of large-scale structure. If a narrow-band optical survey can detect objects as faint as i=23, it could reach volumetric number densities as high as 10^{-4} h^3 Mpc^{-3} (comoving) at z~1.5 . Such a catalog would lead to precision measurements of the power spectrum up to z~3-4. We also show that it is possible to employ quasars to measure baryon acoustic oscillations at high redshifts, where the uncertainties from redshift distortions and nonlinearities are much smaller than at z<1. As a concrete example we study the future impact of J-PAS, which is a narrow-band imaging survey in the optical over 1/5 of the unobscured sky with 42 filters of ~100 A full-width at half-maximum. We show that J-PAS will be able to take advantage of the broad emission lines of quasars to deliver excellent photometric redshifts, \sigma_{z}~0.002(1+z), for millions of objects.