Variability selected high-redshift quasars on SDSS Stripe 82
  The SDSS-III BOSS Quasar survey will attempt to observe z>2.15 quasars at a
density of at least 15 per square degree to yield the first measurement of the
Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Ly-alpha forest. To help reaching this
goal, we have developed a method to identify quasars based on their variability
in the u g r i z optical bands. The method has been applied to the selection of
quasar targets in the SDSS region known as Stripe 82 (the Southern equatorial
stripe), where numerous photometric observations are available over a 10-year
baseline. This area was observed by BOSS during September and October 2010.
Only 8% of the objects selected via variability are not quasars, while 90% of
the previously identified high-redshift quasar population is recovered. The
method allows for a significant increase in the z>2.15 quasar density over
previous strategies based on optical (ugriz) colors, achieving a density of
24.0 deg^{-2} on average down to g~22 over the 220 deg^2 area of Stripe 82. We
applied this method to simulated data from the Palomar Transient Factory and
from Pan-STARRS, and showed that even with data that have sparser time sampling
than what is available in Stripe 82, including variability in future quasar
selection strategies would lead to increased target selection efficiency in the
z>2.15 redshift range. We also found that Broad Absorption Line quasars are
preferentially present in a variability than in a color selection.
