8 research outputs found
Low frequency radio properties of the z>5 quasar population
Optically luminous quasars at z > 5 are important probes of super-massive black hole (SMBH) formation. With new and future
radio facilities, the discovery of the brightest low-frequency radio sources in this epoch would be an important new probe of cosmic
reionization through 21-cm absorption experiments. In this work, we systematically study the low-frequency radio properties of a
sample of 115 known spectroscopically confirmed z > 5 quasars using the second data release of the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR)
Two Metre Sky survey (LoTSS-DR2), reaching noise levels of ∼80 µJy beam−1
(at 144 MHz) over an area of ∼ 5720 deg2
. We find
that 41 sources (36%) are detected in LoTSS-DR2 at > 2σ significance and we explore the evolution of their radio properties (power,
spectral index, and radio loudness) as a function of redshift and rest-frame ultra-violet properties. We obtain a median spectral index
of −0.29+0.10
−0.09 by stacking 93 quasars using LoTSS-DR2 and Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty Centimetres (FIRST) data at
1.4 GHz, in line with observations of quasars at z < 3. We compare the radio loudness of the high-z quasar sample to a lower-z quasar
sample at z ∼ 2 and find that the two radio loudness distributions are consistent with no evolution, although the low number of high-z
quasars means that we cannot rule out weak evolution. Furthermore, we make a first order empirical estimate of the z = 6 quasar radio
luminosity function, which is used to derive the expected number of high-z sources that will be detected in the completed LoTSS
survey. This work highlights the fact that new deep radio observations can be a valuable tool in selecting high-z quasar candidates for
follow-up spectroscopic observations by decreasing contamination of stellar dwarfs and reducing possible selection biases introduced
by strict colour cuts