{
  "id": "1902.06955",
  "version": "v1",
  "published": "2019-02-19T09:06:32.000Z",
  "updated": "2019-02-19T09:06:32.000Z",
  "title": "The halo mass of optically-luminous quasars at z=1-2 measured via gravitational deflection of the cosmic microwave background",
  "authors": [
    "J. E. Geach",
    "J. A. Peacock",
    "A. D. Myers",
    "R. C. Hickox",
    "M. C. Burchard",
    "M. L. Jones"
  ],
  "comment": "Accepted for publication in ApJ",
  "categories": [
    "astro-ph.GA",
    "astro-ph.CO"
  ],
  "abstract": "We measure the average deflection of cosmic microwave background photons by quasars at $\\langle z \\rangle =1.7$. Our sample is selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to cover the redshift range $0.9\\leq z\\leq2.2$ with absolute i-band magnitudes of $M_i\\leq-24$ (K-corrected to z=2). A stack of nearly 200,000 targets reveals an 8$\\sigma$ detection of Planck's estimate of the lensing convergence towards the quasars. We fit the signal with a model comprising a Navarro-Frenk-White density profile and a 2-halo term accounting for correlated large scale structure, which dominates the observed signal. The best-fitting model is described by an average halo mass $\\log_{10}(M_{\\rm h}/h^{-1}M_\\odot)=12.6\\pm0.2$ and linear bias $b=2.7\\pm0.3$ at $z=1.7$, in excellent agreement with clustering studies. We also report of a hint, at a 90% confidence level, of a correlation between the convergence amplitude and luminosity, indicating that quasars brighter than $M_i\\lesssim -26$ reside in halos of typical mass ${M_{\\rm h}\\approx 10^{13}\\,h^{-1}M_\\odot}$, scaling roughly as ${M_{\\rm h}\\propto L_{\\rm opt}^{3/4}}$ at ${M_i\\lesssim-24}$, in good agreement with physically-motivated quasar demography models. Although we acknowledge this luminosity dependence is a marginal result, the observed $M_{\\rm h}$-$L_{\\rm opt}$ relationship could be interpreted as a reflection of the cutoff in the distribution of black hole accretion rates towards high Eddington ratios: the weak trend of $M_{\\rm h}$ with $L_{\\rm opt}$ observed at low luminosity becomes stronger for the most powerful quasars, which tend to be accreting close to the Eddington limit.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v1",
      "updated": "2019-02-19T09:06:32.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "halo mass",
      "gravitational deflection",
      "optically-luminous quasars",
      "cosmic microwave background photons",
      "sloan digital sky survey"
    ],
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 0,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable"
    }
  }
}