VAR-PZ: Constraining the photometric redshifts of quasars using variability

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) is expected to obtain observations of over ten million quasars. The survey’s exceptional cadence and sensitivity will enable a significant fraction of these objects to be monitored in the ugrizy bands, spanning observed wavelengths of approximately 0.3 − 1.0 μm. The unprecedented number of sources makes spectroscopic follow-up for the vast majority of them unfeasible in the near future, so most studies will have to rely on photometric redshift estimates which are traditionally much less reliable for Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) than for inactive galaxies. This work presents a novel methodology to constrain the photometric redshift of AGNs that leverages the effects of cosmological time dilation, and of the luminosity and wavelength dependence of AGN variability. Specifically, we assume that the variability can be modeled as a damped random walk (DRW) process, and we adopted a parametric model to characterize the DRW timescale ( τ ) and asymptotic amplitude of the variability (SF ∞ ) based on the redshift, the rest-frame wavelength, and the AGN luminosity. We constructed variability-based photometric redshift (photo- z ) priors by modeling the observed variability using the expected DRW parameters at a given redshift. These variability-based photo- z ( VAR-PZ ) priors were then combined with traditional spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting to improve the redshift estimates from SED fitting. Validation was performed using observational data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), demonstrating significant reduction in catastrophic outliers by more than 10% in comparison with SED fitting techniques and improvements in redshift precision. The simulated light curves with both SDSS and LSST-like cadences and baselines confirm that VAR-PZ will be able to constrain the photometric redshifts of SDSS-like AGNs by bringing the outlier fractions down to below 15% from 32% (SED alone) at the end of the survey.