This repo hosts the code to construct the Quaia catalog of Gaia-unWISE quasars.

The associated paper can be found at https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.17749. The data products are hosted at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8060755.

Our analysis of the cross-correlation of Quaia with CMB lensing can be found at https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.17748. The data products relevant to this analysis are hosted at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8098635.

The main relevant scripts for the Quaia paper are (to be run in this order):

• make_data_tables.py: Constructs the necessary data tables of quasars and other sources.
• decontaminate.py: Learns optimal cuts and decontaminates the sample.
• specphotoz.py: Estimates spectrophotometric redshifts for the Quaia sources.
• make_catalogs.py: Compiles the final catalogs, with redshift info and magnitude cuts (both the working versions and the public-facing versions).
• selection_function_map.py: Constructs the selection function based on the catalog and feature templates.
• generate_random.py: Generates a random catalog based on an input selection function.

Detailed instructions for generating custom selection functions and randoms are given in the respective files.

The main relevant notebooks are:

• 2023-06-16_paper_figures.ipynb: Creates (most of) the figures in the paper.
• 2023-06-16_paper_quantities.ipynb: Calculates (most of) the quantities in the paper.
• 2023-06-16_catalog_comparison.ipynb: Creates the figures and calculates the quantities for the catalog comparison section of the paper.
• 2023-06-16_data_products.ipynb: Shows how to load and plot the main data products (Quaia catalog, selection function, and randoms).

For questions or issues, please open an issue here or email [email protected].