Quasar Host Galaxies of GEMS, First Results: 0.5 < z < 2.75

Jahnke, K.; Sánchez, S. F.; Wisotzki, L.; Barden, M.;Beckwith, S. V. W.; Bell, E. F.; Borch, A.;Caldwell, J. A. R.; Häußler, B.; Jogee, S.;McIntosh, D. H.; Meisenheimer, K.; Peng, C. Y.;Rix, H.-W.; Somerville, R. S.; Wolf, C.. Quasar Host Galaxies of GEMS, First Results: 0.5 < z < 2.75. Multiwavelength mapping of galaxy formation and evolution, Proceedings of the ESO Workshop held at Venice, Italy, 13-16 October 2003. Edited by A. Renzini and R. Bender. Series Editor: Bruno Leibundgut, ESO, Garching, Germany. ESO astrophysics symposia. Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 2005925391. ISBN 10 3-540-25665-2; ISBN 13 978-540-25565-6; QB857.5.E96 E78 2003. Published by Springer, Berlin, 2005, p.400. 2005, Vol. , p. -2005.

Understanding the host galaxies (HGs) of quasars is the key to linking the evolution of galaxies and their central black holes. Within the GEMS project we are studying quasar HGs and their morphologies, luminosities, ages and environment up to redshift z ~ 3. GEMS - Galaxy Evolution from Morphologies and SEDs - is a large, two-filter (F606W, F850LP) imaging survey with the HST ACS, centered on the Chandra Deep Field South. For ~ 8 000 galaxies and ~ 130 AGN photometric redshifts are available in this field from the COMBO-17 project (Wolf et al., 2003, A&A, 401, 73). Full GEMS overview by Rix et al. (these proceedings). For the initial study we defined two quasar samples with 0.5 < z < 1.1 and 1.8 < z < 2.75 (`low' and `high', 16 and 22 quasars, respectively), complete down to a flux limit of R = 24 and representing intermediately luminous AGN.