Abstract
About 70 high redshift quasars with $z{\geq}5$ have been discovered through combinations of standard broad-band filters to distinguish them from contaminating sources. However, among the discovered quasars so far, there is a redshift gap at $5{\leq}z{\leq}6$ due to the limitation of traditional filter sets and selection techniques. To understand the early mass growth of supermassive black holes and the final stage of the cosmic reionization, it is important to find a statistically meaningful sample of quasars with various physical properties. Here we suggest a new selection technique of high redshift quasars using medium-band filters: nine filters with bandwidths of 50nm and central wavelengths from 625 to 1025nm. Photometry with these medium-bands traces the spectral energy distribution (SED) of a source, similar to spectroscopy with R~15. We installed these filters to SED camera for QUasars in EArly uNiverse (SQUEAN) on the 2.1m telescope at McDonald Observatory, and conducted test observations of known high redshift quasars at $4.7{\leq}z{\leq}6.1$ and also dwarf stars for comparison. We found differences in SED shapes between high redshift quasars and dwarf stars, determined their locations on color-color diagrams, and demonstrated that the medium-band filters can enhance the efficiency of selecting robust quasar candidates in this redshift range. In this poster, we propose an effective selection method of high redshift quasars using these medium-band filters and discuss its effect on our high redshift quasar survey.
(School of Space Research, Kyung Hee University)
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