Ultraluminous high-redshift quasars from SkyMapper – II. New quasars and the bright end of the luminosity function

Abstract

ABSTRACT We search for ultraluminous Quasi-Stellar Objects (QSOs) at high redshift using photometry from the SkyMapper Southern Survey Data Release 3 (DR3), in combination with 2MASS, VHS DR6, VIKING DR5, AllWISE, and CatWISE2020, as well as parallaxes and proper motions from Gaia DR2 and eDR3. We report 142 newly discovered Southern QSOs at 3.8 < z < 5.5, of which 126 have M145 < −27 AB mag and are found in a search area of 14 486 deg2. This Southern sample, utilizing the Gaia astrometry to offset wider photometric colour criteria, achieves unprecedented completeness for an ultraluminous QSO search at high redshift. In combination with already known QSOs, we construct a sample that is >80 per cent complete for M145 < −27.33 AB mag at z = 4.7 and for M145 < −27.73 AB mag at z = 5.4. We derive the bright end of the QSO luminosity function at rest frame 145 nm for z = 4.7–5.4 and measure its slope to be β = −3.60 ± 0.37 and β = −3.38 ± 0.32 for two different estimates of the faint-end QSO density adopted from the literature. We also present the first z ∼ 5 QSO luminosity function at rest frame 300 nm.