MAD Adaptive Optics Imaging of High Luminosity Quasars: A Pilot Project
  We present near-IR images of five luminous quasars at z~2 and one at z~4
obtained with an experimental adaptive optics instrument at the ESO Very Large
Telescope. The observations are part of a program aimed at demonstrating the
capabilities of multi-conjugated adaptive optics imaging combined with the use
of natural guide stars for high spatial resolution studies on large telescopes.
The observations were mostly obtained under poor seeing conditions but in two
cases. In spite of these non optimal conditions, the resulting images of point
sources have cores of FWHM ~0.2 arcsec. We are able to characterize the host
galaxy properties for 2 sources and set stringent upper limits to the galaxy
luminosity for the others. We also report on the expected capabilities for
investigating the host galaxies of distant quasars with adaptive optics systems
coupled with future Extremely Large Telescopes. Detailed simulations show that
it will be possible to characterize compact (2-3 kpc) quasar host galaxies for
QSOs at z = 2 with nucleus K-magnitude spanning from 15 to 20 (corresponding to
absolute magnitude -31 to -26) and host galaxies that are 4 mag fainter than
their nuclei.
