Joint Survey Processing I: Compact oddballs in the COSMOS field -- low-luminosity Quasars at z > 6?

TL;DR

This study combines ground and space-based data to identify faint, high-redshift quasars in the COSMOS field, providing insights into their role in cosmic reionization and galaxy formation.

Contribution

It introduces a pixel-level joint processing method to create a deconfused catalog, enabling the identification of low-luminosity z>6 quasar candidates with improved accuracy.

Findings

Identified 12 low-luminosity z>6 quasar candidates.

Constraints suggest quasars contribute negligibly to reionization.

Method improves separation of quasars from stars and galaxies.

Abstract

The faint-end slope of the quasar luminosity function at z~6 and its implication on the role of quasars in reionizing the intergalactic medium at early times has been an outstanding problem for some time. The identification of faint high-redshift quasars with luminosities of <1e44.5 erg/s is challenging. They are rare (few per square-degree) and the separation of these unresolved quasars from late-type stars and compact star-forming galaxies is difficult from ground-based observations alone. In addition, source confusion becomes significant at >25mag, with 30% of sources having their flux contaminated by foreground objects when the seeing resolution is ~0.7". We mitigate these issues by performing a pixel-level joint processing of ground and space-based data from Subaru/HSC and HST/ACS. We create a deconfused catalog over the 1.64 square-degrees of the COSMOS field, after accounting for spatial varying PSFs and astrometric differences between the two datasets. We identify twelve low-luminosity (M_UV ~ -21 mag) z>6 quasar candidates through (i) their red color measured between ACS/F814W and HSC/i-band and (ii) their compactness in the space-based data. Non-detections of our candidates in Hubble DASH data argues against contamination from late-type stars. Our constraints on the faint end of the quasar luminosity function at z~6.4 suggests a negligibly small contribution to reionization compared to the star-forming galaxy population. The confirmation of our candidates and the evolution of number density with redshift could provide better insights into how supermassive galaxies grew in the first billion years of cosmic time.