Magnification of light from many distant quasars by gravitational lenses

Details Magnification of light from many distant quasars by gravitational lenses Magnification of light from many distant quasars by gravitational lenses

Jun 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002natur.417..923w&link_type=abstract

Nature, Volume 417, Issue 6892, pp. 923-925 (2002).

Physics

36

Scientific paper

Exceptionally bright quasars with redshifts up to z = 6.28 have recently been discovered. Quasars are thought to be powered by the accretion of gas onto supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies. Their maximum (Eddington) luminosity depends on the mass of the black hole, and the brighter quasars are inferred to have black holes with masses of more than a few billion solar masses. The existence of such massive black holes poses a challenge to models for the formation of structures in the early Universe, as it requires their formation within one billion years of the Big Bang. Here we show that up to one-third of known quasars with z ~ 6 will have had their observed flux magnified by a factor of ten or more, as a consequence of gravitational lensing by galaxies along the line of sight. The inferred abundance of quasar host galaxies, as well as the luminosity density provided by the quasars, has therefore been substantially overestimated.

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