AChandraSnapshot Survey of Representative High-Redshift Radio-Loud Quasars from the Parkes-MIT-NRAO Sample

We present the results of Chandra ACIS-S snapshot observations of six radio-loud quasars (RLQs) at z ≈ 3.5-4.7. These observations sample luminous RLQs with moderate to high radio loudness ( R ≈ 200-9600) and aim to connect the X-ray properties of radio-quiet quasars ( R < 10) and highly radio-loud blazars ( R > 1000) at high redshift. This work extends a study by Bassett and coworkers that used similar methods to examine z > 4 RLQs with moderate radio loudness ( R ≈ 40-400). All of our targets are clearly detected. A search for extended X-ray emission associated with kiloparsec-scale radio jets revealed only limited evidence for X-ray extension in our sample: three sources showed no evidence of X-ray extension, and the other three had 3%-30% of their total X-ray fluxes extended >1'' away from their X-ray cores. In addition, we do not observe any systematic flattening of the optical-to-X-ray spectral index (α ox ) compared to low-redshift quasars. These results suggest that kiloparsec-scale X-ray jet emission is not dominated by inverse Compton scattering of cosmic microwave background seed photons off jet electrons. We measured X-ray continuum shapes and performed individual and joint spectral fits of our data combined with eight archival RLQs. A single power-law model acceptably fitted the data, with best-fit photon indices of 1.72 for moderate- R sources and 1.47 for high- R sources. We added an intrinsic absorption component to our model, and neither the moderate- R nor the high- R fits set a lower bound on N H . The upper limits were N H < 3.0 × 10 22 cm -2 and N H < 2.8 × 10 22 cm -2 , respectively. Our spectral results suggest that intrinsic absorption does not strongly depend on radio loudness, and high- R sources have flatter power laws than moderate- R sources. Overall, our high-redshift RLQs have basic X-ray properties consistent with similar RLQs in the local universe.