DES J0454-4448: discovery of the first luminous z >= 6 quasar from the Dark Energy Survey

We present the first results of a survey for high-redshift, z >= 6, quasars using izY multicolour photometric observations from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). Here we report the discovery and spectroscopic confirmation of the zAB, YAB = 20.2, 20.2 (M1450 = -26.5) quasar DES J0454-4448 with a redshift of z = 6.09±0.02 based on the onset of the Ly alpha forest and an H I near zone size of 4.1_{-1.2}^{+1.1} proper Mpc. The quasar was selected as an i-band drop out with i-z = 2.46 and zAB 6 including 3-10 with z > 7 dramatically increasing the numbers of quasars currently known that are suitable for detailed studies