3<z<5 quasar luminosity function in the COSMOS

Careful analysis of the extensive COSMOS photometry and imaging data allows us to identify and remove stellar and low-redshift contaminants, enabling a selection that is nearly complete for type-1 quasars at the redshifts of interest. We find 155 likely quasars at z>3.1, 39 of which have prior spectroscopic confirmation.

We present our sample in detail and use these confirmed and likely quasars to compute the rest-frame UV QLF in the redshift bins 3.1<z<3.5 and 3.5<z<5. The space density of faint quasars decreases by roughly a factor of four from z~3.2 to z~4, with faint-end slopes of {beta}~-1.7 at both redshifts. The decline in space density of faint optical quasars at z>3 is similar to what has been found for more luminous optical and X-ray quasars.