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We present the Lyman- (Ly) and ultraviolet (UV) luminosity function (LF), in bins of redshift, of quasars selected in the Physics of the Accelerating Universe Survey (PAUS). A sample of 915 objects was selected at 2. 710^44 erg\, s^-1. In order to obtain corrections for the LF estimation, and assess the accuracy of our selection method, we produced mock catalogs of 0<z<4. 3 quasars and galaxies that mimic our target population and their main contaminants. Our results show a clear evolution of the Ly and UV LFs, with a declining tendency in the number density of quasars towards increasing redshifts. In addition, the faint-end power-law slope of the Ly LF becomes steeper with redshift, suggesting that the number density of Ly-bright quasars declines faster than that of fainter emitters. By integrating the Ly LF we find that the total Ly emitted by bright quasars per unit volume rapidly declines with increasing redshift, being sub-dominant to that of star-forming galaxies by several orders of magnitude by z 4. Finally, we stack the NB pseudo-spectra of a visually selected "golden sample" of 591 quasars to obtain photometric composite SEDs in bins of redshift, enabling to measure the mean IGM absorption by the Lyman- forest as a function of redshift.
Torralba et al. (Fri,) studied this question.