The Composite Spectrum of BOSS Quasars Selected for Studies of the Lyman-alpha Forest release_ofhu57c2b5gd7ofmx6z5zpqzsu

by David W. Harris, Trey W. Jensen, Nao Suzuki, Julian E. Bautista, Kyle S. Dawson, M. Vivek, Joel R. Brownstein, Jian Ge, Fred Hamann, H. Herbst, Linhua Jiang, Sarah E. Moran, Adam D. Myers (+2 others)

Released as a article .

2016  

Abstract

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) has collected more than 150,000 2.1 ≤ z ≤ 3.5 quasar spectra since 2009. Using this unprecedented sample, we create a composite spectrum in the rest-frame of 102,150 quasar spectra from 800 Å to 3300 Å at a signal-to-noise ratio close to 1000 per pixel (Δ v of 69 km s^-1). Included in this analysis is a correction to account for flux calibration residuals in the BOSS spectrophotometry. We determine the spectral index as a function of redshift of the full sample, warp the composite spectrum to match the median spectral index, and compare the resulting spectrum to SDSS photometry used in target selection. The quasar composite matches the color of the quasar population to within 0.02 magnitudes in g-r, 0.03 magnitudes in r-i, and 0.01 magnitudes in i-z over the redshift range 2.2<z<2.6. The composite spectrum deviates from the imaging photometry by 0.05 magnitudes around z = 2.7, likely due to differences in target selection as the quasar colors become similar to the stellar locus at this redshift. Finally, we characterize the line features in the high signal-to-noise composite and identify nine faint lines not found in the previous composite spectrum from SDSS.
In text/plain format

Archived Files and Locations

application/pdf  8.1 MB
file_wlh7frtovzcbrajyokh5ejl4z4
arxiv.org (repository)
web.archive.org (webarchive)
Read Archived PDF
Preserved and Accessible
Type  article
Stage   submitted
Date   2016-03-29
Version   v1
Language   en ?
arXiv  1603.08626v1
Work Entity
access all versions, variants, and formats of this works (eg, pre-prints)
Catalog Record
Revision: 109d15cb-0e37-4052-bfa2-3ccab3143f8c
API URL: JSON