The galaxy environment of a QSO at z ~ 5.7

High-redshift quasars are thought to reside in the most massive halos in the early universe and should therefore be located in fields with overdensities of galaxies, which are expected to evolve into galaxy clusters seen in the local Universe. In Bañados et al. (2013), we used deep narrow-band imaging to study the environment of the z=5.72 quasar ULAS J0203 + 0012. The redshift range probed by our narrow band selection is Δz ~ 0.1. This was the first time that Lyman alpha emitters (LAEs) were searched for near a z ~ 6 quasar, to provide clues on the surroundings of quasars at the end of the epoch of reionization. The main result of this work is that no enhancement of LAEs has been found in the surroundings of ULAS J0203 + 0012. We discuss different explanations and interpretations for this non-detection of a galaxy overdensity.