Machine Learning-based Search of High-redshift Quasars

Abstract: We present a machine learning search for high-redshift ($5.0 < z < 6.5$) quasars using the combined photometric data from the DESI Imaging Legacy Surveys and the WISE survey. We explore the imputation of missing values for high-redshift quasars, discuss the feature selections, compare different machine learning algorithms, and investigate the selections of class ensemble for the training sample, then we find that the random forest model is very effective in separating the high-redshift quasars from various contaminators. The 11-class random forest model can achieve a precision of $96.43\%$ and a recall of $91.53\%$ for high-redshift quasars for the test set. We demonstrate that the completeness of the high-redshift quasars can reach as high as $82.20\%$. The final catalog consists of 216,949 high-redshift quasar candidates with 476 high probable ones in the entire Legacy Surveys DR9 footprint, and we make the catalog publicly available. Using MUSE and DESI-EDR public spectra, we find that 14 true high-redshift quasars (11 in the training sample) out of 21 candidates are correctly identified for MUSE, and 20 true high-redshift quasars (11 in the training sample) out of 21 candidates are correctly identified for DESI-EDR. Additionally, we estimate photometric redshift for the high-redshift quasar candidates using random forest regression model with a high precision.