The Highest Redshift Quasars and the Epoch of Reionization

最高红移类星体和再电离时代

• 批准号: 0806861
• 负责人: Xiaohui Fan
• 金额: $ 34.81万
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-09-01 至 2013-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0806861&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Highest; Redshift; Quasars; Epoch; Reionization

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.

获奖者将使用大型双目望远镜（LBT）上新委托的红色优化CCD相机进行宽视场，中深度的海洋调查，其灵敏度提高到1微米。这次巡天将首次发现红移为z7的暗淡类星体。 他们将联合收割机将LBT样本与6 z 8的其他高光度类星体组合，并将在远红和近红外波长进行光谱跟踪观测。 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历史，并确定星系际介质是否在z ~6.5 - 8时变得基本中性。这项工作的更广泛影响包括研究生和本科生的研究培训，新发现的类星体的后续研究，以及偶然发现其他类型的物体，如褐矮星。