UV–Optical Colors of the Host Galaxies of z ~ 2–3 Radio-Quiet Quasars

Abstract

Understanding the links between the formation and evolution of the AGN population and the formation and evolution of galaxies requires investigation of the relationship between these populations at high redshift, where the quasar luminosity function is reaching a maximum. We have made a deep space-based near-infrared (NIR) imaging study of the properties of the host galaxies of z ~ 2–3 radio-quiet quasar (RQQ) hosts and compared them to those of the other known high-z galaxies, the Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) and the hosts of radio-loud objects. We found that the RQQ hosts have rest-frame optical magnitudes and sizes that are similar to the LBGs, and are much fainter than most radio-loud hosts at these epochs. We have also obtained rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) imaging of this sample, and use this to study the UV–optical colors of the hosts. These allow us to compare the star-forming properties of the quasar hosts with those of the LBGs.

Keywords

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.