The XMM deep survey in the CDF-S IV. Compton-thick AGN candidates
View/ Open
Full record
Show full item recordAuthor
Georgantopoulos, Ioannis; Comastri, Andrea; Vignali, Cristian; Ranalli, Piero; Rovilos, Emmanouel; Iwasawa, Kazushi; Gilli, Roberto; Cappelluti, Nico; Carrera Troyano, Francisco Jesús
Date
2013-07Derechos
© ESO, 2013
Publicado en
Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2013, 555, A43
Publisher
EDP Sciences
Enlace a la publicación
Palabras clave
X-rays: diffuse background
Infrared: galaxies
Galaxies: active
X-rays: galaxies
Abstract:
The Chandra Deep Field is the region of the sky with the highest concentration of X-ray data available: 4 Ms of Chandra and 3 Ms of XMM-Newton data, allowing excellent quality spectra to be extracted even for faint sources. We took advantage of this to compile a sample of heavily obscured active galactic nuclei (AGN) using X-ray spectroscopy. We selected our sample among the 176 brightest XMM-Newton sources, searching for either flat X-ray spectra (Γ < 1.4 at the 90% confidence level) suggestive of a reflection dominated continuum or an absorption turn-over suggestive of a column density higher than ≈ 1024 cm-2. We found a sample of nine heavily-obscured sources satisfying the above criteria. Four of these show statistically significant FeKα lines with large equivalent widths (three out of four have equivalent widths consistent with 1 keV) suggesting that these are the most certain Compton-thick AGN candidates. Two of these sources are transmission dominated while the other two are most probably reflection dominated Compton-thick AGN. Although this sample of four sources is by no means statistically complete, it represents the best example of Compton-thick sources found at moderate-to-high redshift with three sources at z = 1.2–1.5 and one source at z = 3.7. Using Spitzer and Herschel observations, we estimate with good accuracy the X-ray to mid-IR (12 μm) luminosity ratio of our sources. These are well below the average AGN relation, independently suggesting that these four sources are heavily obscured.
Collections to which it belong
- D15 Artículos [714]
- D15 Proyectos de Investigación [115]
- D52 Artículos [1064]
- D52 Proyectos de investigación [336]