# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Evidence has been accumulating over last decades that there is a link between the quasar activity and overdensities of galaxies around the host galaxy (,  , , and references therein). Recent results, , have shown that there is an excess of $`faint`$ galaxies around a sample of 31 radio-loud quasars at high-$`z`$ ($`z>1`$). The magnitudes and colors of the excess galaxies are consistent with a population of mostly early-type galaxies at the quasar redshift. The size of this overdensity has not been completly determined, beeing larger than $`\theta `$100” (due to the size of the images, about 4’$`\times `$4’).

We report on the results obtained from deep ($`B<`$25 and $`R<`$24) CCD imaging survey of the fields around 7 B3VLA quasars, in the redshift range $`1.0<z<1.6`$. The images were obtained during the night of 1997 March 13 at the 2.2m Calar Alto telescope, with a final integration time of 1800 and 2400 seconds for the $`R`$ and $`B`$ band, respectively. The size of the images, $`6^{}\times 6^{}`$ have allowed us to sample the density of galaxies to scales down to $``$190”.

## 2 Data processing and number counts

We searched for objects in the $`B`$ and $`R`$ band images using the SExtractor package. Our detection thereshold was of 5 connected pixels above 2$`\sigma `$ level per pixel, which guarantees a detection up to 4$`\sigma `$. Simulations have been performed to determine the limits of the validity of the method (detection+magnitude determination+star-galaxy classification) showing that it is valid down to $`R`$23.5-23.8 and $`B`$24.3-24.5.

The $`field`$ number-counts and its variance have been obtained directly from the images, measuring the number of galaxies in an anulus from $`r_{in}`$=170” to $`r_{out}`$=185”, and in a grid of 16 circular, not overlapping, areas of $`r<`$35” (centered more than 70” from the quasars). The measurements were repeated for different ranges of magnitudes, which define the number-counts distribution.

## 3 Results

Figure 1 shows the relative excess of galaxies averaged over the seven fields, at both $`B`$ and $`R`$ bands. There is a significant excess of galaxies around the quasars (5.52$`\sigma `$). The excess presents a tendency with the magnitude range, being significant only for the faintest magnitudes ($`22R23`$ and $`22.5B23.5`$), for any angular scale (down to $`\theta `$160”).

These results indicate most probably that the excess is not due to intervening galaxies, since there is $`no`$ significant excess down to $`R<`$21 and $`B<22.5`$ mag. The magnitudes ($`R`$22.5 and $`B`$23.0), angular scale and number of galaxies of the excess are compatible with beeing clusters or groups of galaxies at the redshift of the quasars.