EIGER. VI. The correlation function, host halo mass, and duty cycle of luminous quasars at z ≳ 6 Eilers, Anna Christina Mackenzie, Ruari Pizzati, Elia Matthee, Jorryt J ; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2871-127X Hennawi, Joseph F. Zhang, Haowen Bordoloi, Rongmon Kashino, Daichi Lilly, Simon J. Naidu, Rohan P. Simcoe, Robert A. Yue, Minghao Frenk, Carlos S. Helly, John C. Schaller, Matthieu Schaye, Joop ddc:520 We expect luminous (M 1450 ≲ −26.5) high-redshift quasars to trace the highest-density peaks in the early Universe. Here, we present observations of four z ≳ 6 quasar fields using JWST/NIRCam in the imaging and wide-field slitless spectroscopy mode and report a wide range in the number of detected [O iii]-emitting galaxies in the quasars’ environments, ranging between a density enhancement of δ ≈ 65 within a 2 cMpc radius—one of the largest protoclusters during the Epoch of Reionization discovered to date—to a density contrast consistent with zero, indicating the presence of a UV-luminous quasar in a region comparable to the average density of the Universe. By measuring the two-point cross-correlation function of quasars and their surrounding galaxies, as well as the galaxy autocorrelation function, we infer a correlation length of quasars at 〈z〉 = 6.25 of r 0 QQ = 22.0 − 2.9 + 3.0 cMpc h − 1 , while we obtain a correlation length of the [O iii]-emitting galaxies of r 0 GG = 4.1 ± 0.3 cMpc h − 1 . By comparing the correlation functions to dark-matter-only simulations we estimate the minimum mass of the quasars’ host dark matter halos to be log 10 ( M halo , min / M ⊙ ) = 12.43 − 0.15 + 0.13 (and log 10 ( M halo , min [ OIII ] / M ⊙ ) = 10.56 − 0.03 + 0.05 for the [O iii] emitters), indicating that (a) luminous quasars do not necessarily reside within the most overdense regions in the early Universe, and that (b) the UV-luminous duty cycle of quasar activity at these redshifts is f duty ≪ 1. Such short quasar activity timescales challenge our understanding of early supermassive black hole growth and provide evidence for highly dust-obscured growth phases or episodic, radiatively inefficient accretion rates. IOP Publishing 2024 info:eu-repo/semantics/article doc-type:article text http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_2df8fbb1 https://research-explorer.ista.ac.at/record/18494 https://research-explorer.ista.ac.at/download/18494/18496 Eilers AC, Mackenzie R, Pizzati E, et al. EIGER. VI. The correlation function, host halo mass, and duty cycle of luminous quasars at z ≳ 6. <i>Astrophysical Journal</i>. 2024;974(2). doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad778b">10.3847/1538-4357/ad778b</a> eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.3847/1538-4357/ad778b info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/issn/0004-637X info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/e-issn/1538-4357 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/wos/001338877100001 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess