The clustering of quasars can teach us about the dark matter halos in which they live. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has discovered over 6000 quasars with redshifts greater than three. These high redshift quasars are very strongly clustered, implying that they are strongly biased relative to the underlying dark matter, and are thus associated with very rare, massive dark matter halos. This bias grows on the very smallest scales: close pairs of quasars are much more common than an extrapolation of the large-scale clustering signal would imply.

May 15, 2007
4:00 p.m. MT

Array Operations Center Auditorium

All NRAO employees are invited to attend via video, available in Charlottesville Room 230, Green Bank Room 137 and Tucson 525.

Local Host: Chris Carilli