Performance of the Quasar Spectral Templates for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

Understand

Millions of quasar spectra will be collected by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), leading to a four-fold increase in the number of known quasars.

• High accuracy quasar classification is essential to tighten constraints on cosmological parameters measured at the highest redshifts DESI observes ($z>2.0$).
• We present the spectral templates for identification and redshift estimation of quasars in the DESI Year 1 data release.
• The quasar templates are comprised of two quasar eigenspectra sets, trained on spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.