SCUBA-2 High Redshift Bright Quasar Survey. II. The Environment of z similar to 6 Quasars at Submillimeter Band

The formation of the first supermassive black holes is expected to have occurred in some most pronounced matter and galaxy overdensities in the early universe. We have conducted a submillimeter wavelength continuum survey of 54 z similar to 6 quasars using the Submillimeter Common-User Bolometre Array-2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope to study the environments around z similar to 6 quasars. We identified 170 submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) with above 3.5s detections in.450 or 850 mu m maps. Their far-IR luminosities are (2.2-6.4) x 1012 Le, and their star formation rates are similar to 400-1200 Me yr(-1). We also calculated the SMGs' differential and cumulative number counts in a combined area of similar to 620 arcmin2. To a 4s detection (at similar to 5.5 mJy), SMGs' overdensity is 0.68+ 0.190.21 (+/- 0.19), exceeding the blank-field source counts by a factor of 1.68. We find that 13/54 quasars show overdensities (at similar to 5.5 mJy) of dSMG similar to 1.5-5.4. The combined area of these 13 quasars exceeds the blank-field counts with the overdensity to 5.5 mJy of dSMG similar to 2.46+ 0.550.64 (+/- 0.25) in the regions of similar to 150 arcmin2. However, the excess is insignificant on the bright end (e.g., 7.5 mJy). We also compare results with previous environmental studies of Lya emitters and Lyman break galaxies on a similar scale. Our survey presents the first systematic study of the environment of quasars at z similar to 6. The newly discovered SMGs provide essential candidates for follow-up spectroscopic observations to test whether they reside in the same large-scale structures as the quasars and search for protoclusters at an early epoch.