Modeling the Surface Brightness Profiles of Quasar Host Galaxies using the Sersic Function

Abstract

Through decomposing the image data provided by the Hyper Suprime-Cam, I attempt to explore the properties of quasar host galaxies. The Sersic function is employed to model the profile of the host galaxy, and the PSF image provided by the Hyper Suprime-Cam models the quasar profile. Using the least-square fitting method, I determine the parameters that most appropriately allocate the light contribution between the host (Sersic) and the quasar (PSF). The results strongly suggest that there is a bug in the algorithm that leads to biasing toward extreme values, which makes some of the results questionable. However, once the code is correctly implemented, the methodology used in this study may be used to study the properties of quasar host galaxies in other occasions.