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B. Siana, H.E. Smith (UCSD/CASS), C.J. Lonsdale (IPAC/Caltech), E.A. Gonzalez-Solares (IoA, Cambridge), T. Babbedge (Imperial College), SWIRE Team
The Spitzer Wide-area InfraRed Extragalactic (SWIRE) Legacy Survey has imaged ~49 sq. degrees in the mid to far-infrared with the Spitzer Space Telescope detecting over 2.5 million sources. Deep optical imaging (r~24) has been obtained in at least 4 bands over ~30 sq. degrees to help characterize these IR galaxies. This optical data allows for an unprecedented search for high-redshift QSOs through identification of a continuum break due to Inter-Galactic absorption blueward of Lyman-alpha. Typical contaminants in these searches (stars and low-z ellipticals) have similar optical colors but have very blue mid-IR colors compared to the red mid-IR colors of QSOs. Therefore, we can efficiently remove interlopers by examining their IR SEDs. We verify our technique with SDSS quasars and search ~ 2.5 mags fainter than the SDSS. We present the luminosity functions of U,g,r dropouts at z~3,4,5 respectively and compute the QSO contribution to the UV radiation field at 3 < z < 6.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: bds@physics.ucsd.edu
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 5
© 2004. The American Astronomical Society.