The Diversity of Environments around Luminous Quasars at Redshift z ∼ 6

Abstract

Significant clustering around the rarest luminous quasars is a feature predicted by dark matter theory combined with number density matching arguments. However, this expectation is not reflected by observations of quasars residing in a diverse range of environments. Here we assess the tension in the diverse clustering of visible i-band dropout galaxies around luminous z ∼ 6 quasars. Our approach uses a simple empirical method to derive the median luminosity-to-halo mass relation, L c (M h ), for both quasars and galaxies under the assumption of lognormal luminosity scatter, Σ Q and Σ G . We show that higher Σ Q reduces the average halo mass hosting a quasar of a given luminosity, thus introd..