Cosmological test using the Hubble diagram of high-z quasars

Abstract

It has been known for over three decades that the monochromatic X-ray and UV luminosities in quasars are correlated, though non-linearly. This offers the possibility of using high-z quasars as standard candles for cosmological testing. In this paper, we use a recently assembled, high-quality catalogue of 1598 quasars extending all the way to redshift ∼6, to compare the predictions of the R_h = ct and Lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM) cosmologies. In so doing, we affirm that the parameters characterizing the correlation depend only weakly on the chosen cosmology, and that both models account very well for the data. Unlike ΛCDM, however, the R_h = ct model has no free parameters for this work, so the Bayesian Information Criterion favours it over ΛCDM with a relative likelihood of ∼ 88{{ per cent}} versus ∼ 10{{ per cent}}. This result is consistent with the outcome of other comparative tests, many of which have shown that R_h = ct is favoured over the standard model based on a diverse range of observations.