Bibcode
Shen, Y.; McBride, Cameron K.; White, Martin; Zheng, Zheng; Myers, Adam D.; Guo, Hong; Kirkpatrick, Jessica A.; Padmanabhan, Nikhil; Parejko, John K.; Ross, Nicholas P.; Schlegel, David J.; Schneider, Donald P.; Streblyanska, A.; Swanson, Molly E. C.; Zehavi, Idit; Pan, Kaike; Bizyaev, Dmitry; Brewington, Howard; Ebelke, Garrett; Malanushenko, Viktor; Malanushenko, Elena; Oravetz, Daniel; Simmons, Audrey; Snedden, Stephanie
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 778, Issue 2, article id. 98, 22 pp. (2013).
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12
2013
Journal
Citations
107
Refereed citations
94
Description
We present the measurement of the two-point cross-correlation function
(CCF) of 8198 Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 quasars and
349,608 Data Release 10 CMASS galaxies from the Baryonic Oscillation
Spectroscopic Survey at 0.3 < z < 0.9. The CCF can be reasonably
well fit by a power-law model ξQG(r) = (r/r
0)–γ on projected scales of
rp = 2-25 h –1 Mpc with r 0 =
6.61 ± 0.25 h –1 Mpc and γ = 1.69 ±
0.07. We estimate a quasar linear bias of bQ = 1.38 ±
0.10 at langzrang = 0.53 from the CCF measurements, which corresponds to
a characteristic host halo mass of ~4 × 1012 h
–1 M ☉, compared with a
~1013 h –1 M ☉
characteristic host halo mass for CMASS galaxies. Based on the
clustering measurements, most quasars at \bar{z}\sim 0.5 are not the
descendants of their higher luminosity counterparts at higher redshift,
which would have evolved into more massive and more biased systems at
low redshift. We divide the quasar sample in luminosity and constrain
the luminosity dependence of quasar bias to be dbQ /dlog L =
0.20 ± 0.34 or 0.11 ± 0.32 (depending on different
luminosity divisions) for quasar luminosities –23.5 >
Mi (z = 2) >–25.5, implying a weak luminosity
dependence of clustering for luminous quasars at \bar{z}\sim 0.5. We
compare our measurements with theoretical predictions, halo occupation
distribution (HOD) models, and mock catalogs. These comparisons suggest
that quasars reside in a broad range of host halos. The host halo mass
distributions significantly overlap with each other for quasars at
different luminosities, implying a poor correlation between halo mass
and instantaneous quasar luminosity. We also find that the quasar HOD
parameterization is largely degenerate such that different HODs can
reproduce the CCF equally well, but with different satellite fractions
and host halo mass distributions. These results highlight the
limitations and ambiguities in modeling the distribution of quasars with
the standard HOD approach.
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Formation and Evolution of Galaxies: Observations in Infrared and other Wavelengths
This IAC research group carries out several extragalactic projects in different spectral ranges, using space as well as ground-based telescopes, to study the cosmological evolution of galaxies and the origin of nuclear activity in active galaxies. The group is a member of the international consortium which built the SPIRE instrument for the
Ismael
Pérez Fournon