First discoveries of z~6 quasars with the Kilo Degree Survey and VISTA
  Kilo-Degree Infrared Galaxy survey
  We present the results of our first year of quasar search in the on-going ESO
public Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS) and VISTA Kilo-Degree Infrared Galaxy (VIKING)
surveys. These surveys are among the deeper wide-field surveys that can be used
to uncovered large numbers of z~6 quasars. This allows us to probe a more
common population of z~6 quasars that is fainter than the well-studied quasars
from the main Sloan Digital Sky Survey. From this first set of combined survey
catalogues covering ~250 deg^2 we selected point sources down to Z_AB=22 that
had a very red i-Z (i-Z>2.2) colour. After follow-up imaging and spectroscopy,
we discovered four new quasars in the redshift range 5.8<z<6.0. The absolute
magnitudes at a rest-frame wavelength of 1450 A are between -26.6 < M_1450 <
-24.4, confirming that we can find quasars fainter than M^*, which at z=6 has
been estimated to be between M^*=-25.1 and M^*=-27.6. The discovery of 4
quasars in 250 deg^2 of survey data is consistent with predictions based on the
z~6 quasar luminosity function. We discuss various ways to push the candidate
selection to fainter magnitudes and we expect to find about 30 new quasars down
to an absolute magnitude of M_1450=-24. Studying this homogeneously selected
faint quasar population will be important to gain insight into the onset of the
co-evolution of the black holes and their stellar hosts.
