A Hubble diagram for quasars

We built a data set of 1138 quasars by merging several samples from the literature with X-ray measurements at 2keV and SDSS photometry, which was used to estimate the extinction-corrected 2500{AA} flux. We obtained three main results: (1) we checked the nonlinear relation between X-ray and UV luminosities in small redshift bins up to z~6, confirming that the relation holds at all redshifts with the same slope; (2) we built a Hubble diagram for quasars up to z~6, which is well matched to that of supernovae in the common z=0-1.4 redshift interval and extends the test of the cosmological model up to z~6; and (3) we showed that this nonlinear relation is a powerful tool for estimating cosmological parameters.

Using the present data and assuming a {Lambda}CDM model, we obtain {Omega}_M_=0.22_-0.08_^+0.10^ and {Omega}_{Lambda}_=0.92-0.30_^+0.18^ ({Omega}=0.28+/-0.04 and {Omega}_{Lambda}_=0.73+/-0.08 from a joint quasar-SNe fit). Much more precise measurements will be achieved with future surveys. A few thousand SDSS quasars already have serendipitous X-ray observations from Chandra or XMM-Newton, and at least 100000 quasars with UV and X-ray data will be made available by the extended ROentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array all-sky survey in a few years.