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[98.04] High-redshift Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

X. Fan, M. A. Strauss (Princeton), D. P. Schneider (Penn State), J. E. Gunn, R. H. Lupton (Princeton), S. F. Anderson (Washington), R. H. Becker (UC Davis), Marc Davis, J. A. Newman (UCB), G. T. Richards (Chicago), R. L. White (STScI), SDSS Collaboration

We present photometric and spectroscopic observations of more than 80 high-redshift quasars (3.5 < z < 5.03) discovered from ~400 deg² of five-color (u', g', r', i', z') imaging data taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) during its commissioning phase. The quasars are selected by their distinctive colors in SDSS multicolor space. This quasar sample is used to study the evolution of the quasar luminosity function at high redshift. We find that the number density of luminous quasars at M_B < -26.5 deceases by a factor of ~20 from z ~2.5 to z ~5, in sharp contrast to the non-evolution of star-forming galaxies over a similar redshift range.