# The X-ray properties of z$\sim$6 luminous quasars

## TL;DR

This study analyzes X-ray data of 29 luminous quasars at z > 5.5, revealing their spectral properties are consistent with lower-redshift quasars, suggesting no evolution in their X-ray characteristics up to z ≈ 6.

## Contribution

First comprehensive X-ray spectral analysis of all known luminous quasars at z > 5.5, constraining their spectral properties and evolution.

## Key findings

- X-ray spectral properties are consistent with lower-redshift quasars.
- Mean photon index of 1.92 for stacked spectra at z ≈ 6.
- No significant evolution in X-ray properties up to z ≈ 6.

## Abstract

We present a systematic analysis of X-ray archival data of all the 29 quasars (QSOs) at $z$ > 5.5 observed so far with Chandra, XMM-Newton and Swift-XRT, including the most-distant quasar ever discovered, ULAS J1120+0641 ($z$ = 7.08). This study allows us to place constraints on the mean spectral properties of the primordial population of luminous Type 1 (unobscured) quasars. Eighteen quasars are detected in the X-ray band, and we provide spectral-fitting results for their X-ray properties, while for the others we provide upper limits to their soft (0.5-2.0 keV) X-ray flux. We measured the power-law photon index and derived an upper limit to the column density for the five quasars (J1306+0356, J0100+2802, J1030+0524, J1148+5251, J1120+0641) with the best spectra (> 30 net counts in the 0.5-7.0 keV energy range) and find that they are consistent with values from the literature and lower-redshift quasars. By stacking the spectra of ten quasars detected by Chandra in the redshift range 5.7 $\le$ $z$ $\le$ 6.1 we find a mean X-ray power-law photon index of $\Gamma = 1.92_{-0.27}^{+0.28}$ and a neutral intrinsic absorption column density of $N_H \le 10^{23}$ cm$^{-2}$. These results suggest that the X-ray spectral properties of luminous quasars have not evolved up to $z$ $\approx$ 6. We also derived the optical-X-ray spectral slopes ($\alpha_{ox}$) of our sample and combined them with those of previous works, confirming that $\alpha_{ox}$ strongly correlates with UV monochromatic luminosity at 2500 \AA . These results strengthen the non-evolutionary scenario for the spectral properties of luminous active galactic nuclei (AGN).