The SCUBA-2 Web Survey: I. Observations of CO(3-2) in hyper-luminous QSO
  fields
  A primary goal of the SCUBA-2 Web survey is to perform tomography of the
early inter-galactic medium by studying systems containing some of the
brightest quasi-stellar objects (QSOs; 2.5<z<3.0) and nearby submillimetre
galaxies. As a first step, this paper aims to characterize the galaxies that
host the QSOs. To achieve this, a sample of 13 hyper-luminous (L_AGN>10^14
L_odot) QSOs with previous submillimetre continuum detections were followed up
with CO(3-2) observations using the NOEMA interferometer. All but two of the
QSOs are detected in CO(3-2); for one non-detection, our observations show a
tentative 2sigma line at the expected position and redshift, and for the other
non-detection we find only continuum flux density an order of magnitude
brighter than the other sources. In three of the fields, a companion
potentially suitable for tomography is detected in CO line emission within 25
arcsec of the QSO. We derive gas masses, dynamical masses and far-infrared
luminosities, and show that the QSOs in our sample have similar properties as
compared to less luminous QSOs and SMGs in the literature, despite the fact
that their black-hole masses (which are proportional to L_AGN) are 1-2 orders
of magnitude larger. We discuss two interpretations of these observations: this
is due to selection effects, such as preferential face-on viewing angles and
picking out objects in the tail ends of the scatter in host-galaxy mass and
black-hole mass relationships; or the black hole masses have been overestimated
because the accretion rates are super-Eddington.
