Performance of the Quasar Spectral Templates for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

Brodzeller, Allyson; Dawson, Kyle; Bailey, Stephen; Yu, Jiaxi; Ross, A. J.; Bault, A.; Filbert, S.; Aguilar, J.; Ahlen, S.; Alexander, David M.; Armengaud, E.; Berti, A.; Brooks, D.; Chaussidon, E.; de la Macorra, A.; Doel, P.; Fanning, K.; Fawcett, V. A.; Font-Ribera, A.; A Gontcho, S. Gontcho; Guy, J.; Honscheid, K.; Juneau, S.; Kehoe, R.; Kisner, T.; Kremin, Anthony; Lan, Ting-Wen; Landriau, M.; Levi, Michael E.; Magneville, C.; Martini, Paul; Meisner, Aaron M.; Miquel, R.; Moustakas, J.; Palanque-Delabrouille, N.; Percival, W. J.; Prada, F.; Ravoux, C.; Rossi, Graziano; Saulder, C.; Siudek, M.; Tarlé, Gregory; Weaver, B. A.; Youles, S.; Zheng, Zheng; Zhou, Rongpu; Zhou, Zhimin

Abstract

Millions of quasar spectra will be collected by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), leading to a fourfold increase in the number of known quasars. High-accuracy quasar classification is essential to tighten constraints on cosmological parameters measured at the highest redshifts DESI observes (z > 2.0). We present spectral templates for identification and redshift estimation of quasars in the DESI Year 1 data release. The quasar templates are comprised of two quasar eigenspectra sets, trained on spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The sets are specialized to reconstruct quasar spectral variation observed over separate yet overlapping redshift ranges and, together, are capable of identifying DESI quasars from 0.05 < z < 7.0. The new quasar templates show significant improvement over the previous DESI quasar templates regarding catastrophic failure rates, redshift precision and accuracy, quasar completeness, and the contamination fraction in the final quasar sample.

Citation

Brodzeller, A., Dawson, K., Bailey, S., Yu, J., Ross, A. J., Bault, A., …Zhou, Z. (2023). Performance of the Quasar Spectral Templates for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. Astronomical Journal, 166(2), Article 66. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ace35d

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 1, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Jul 18, 2023
• Publication Date: Aug 1, 2023
• Deposit Date: Nov 1, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 1, 2023
• Journal: The Astronomical Journal
• Print ISSN: 0004-6256
• Electronic ISSN: 1538-3881
• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 166
• Issue: 2
• Article Number: 66
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ace35d
• Keywords: Space and Planetary Science; Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1873281