The Highest Redshift Quasars and the Epoch of Reionization

获奖者将使用新启用的大型双筒望远镜(LBT)上的红色优化CCD相机进行宽视场、中深多色测量，并增强1微米的灵敏度。这项调查将首次发现红移为z 7的微弱类星体。他们将把LBT样本与其他位于6 z 8的高光度类星体结合在一起，并将在远红和近红外波长进行光谱后续观测。这项工作的主要科学目标是限制宇宙中最早的超大质量黑洞的吸积史，并确定星系间介质是否在z~6.5-8之前变得基本中性。这项工作的更广泛影响包括对研究生和本科生的研究培训，对新发现的类星体的后续研究，以及偶然发现的其他类型的天体，如棕矮星。

The awardees will carry out a wide-field, medium deep multicolor survey, using the newly commissioned red-optimized CCD camera on the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) with enhanced sensitivity at 1 micron. This survey will for the first time enable discovery of faint quasars at redshifts z 7. They will combine the LBT sample with other high luminosity quasars at 6 z 8, and will carry out spectroscopic follow-up observations in far red and near-infrared wavelengths. The main science goals of this work are to constrain the accretion history of the earliest supermassive black holes in the Universe, and to determine whether the intergalactic medium becomes largely neutral by z ~6.5 - 8. Broader impacts of this work include research training for graduate and undergraduate students, follow-up studies of newly discovered quasars, and serendipitous discovery of other types of objects such as brown dwarfs.