The Discovery of a Gravitationally Lensed Quasar at z = 6.51
Date Issued
2019
Author(s)
Fan, Xiaohui
•
Wang, Feige
•
Yang, Jinyi
•
Keeton, Charles R.
•
Yue, Minghao
•
Zabludoff, Ann
•
Bian, Fuyan
•
•
Georgiev, Iskren Y.
•
Hennawi, Joseph F.
•
Li, Jiangtao
•
McGreer, Ian D.
•
Naidu, Rohan
•
Pacucci, Fabio
•
Rabien, Sebastian
•
Thompson, David
•
Venemans, Bram
•
Walter, Fabian
•
Wang, Ran
•
Wu, Xue-Bing
Abstract
Strong gravitational lensing provides a powerful probe of the physical properties of quasars and their host galaxies. A high fraction of the most luminous high-redshift quasars was predicted to be lensed due to magnification bias. However, no multiple imaged quasar was found at z > 5 in previous surveys. We report the discovery of J043947.08+163415.7, a strongly lensed quasar at z = 6.51, the first such object detected at the epoch of reionization, and the brightest quasar yet known at z > 5. High-resolution Hubble Space Telescope imaging reveals a multiple imaged system with a maximum image separation θ ∼ 0.″2, best explained by a model of three quasar images lensed by a low-luminosity galaxy at z ∼ 0.7, with a magnification factor of ∼50. The existence of this source suggests that a significant population of strongly lensed, high-redshift quasars could have been missed by previous surveys, as standard color selection techniques would fail when the quasar color is contaminated by the lensing galaxy.
Volume
870
Issue
2
Start page
L11
Issn Identifier
2041-8205
Ads BibCode
2019ApJ...870L..11F
Rights
open.access
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
Fan_2019_ApJL_870_L11.pdf
Description
Pdf editoriale
Size
1019 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
11f8716d64e0a71a4a90fd43733ef1f8