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The XMM-Newton serendipitous survey. IV, Optical identification of the XMM-Newton medium sensitivity survey (XMS)
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(2007) The XMM-Newton serendipitous survey. IV, Optical identification of the XMM-Newton medium sensitivity survey (XMS). Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol.476 (No.3). pp. 1191-1203. doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20077606 ISSN 0004-6361.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20077606
Abstract
Aims. X-ray sources at intermediate fluxes (a few ×10−14 erg cm−2 s−1) with a sky density of ∼100 deg−2 are responsible for a significant fraction of the cosmic X-ray background at various energies below 10 keV. The aim of this paper is to provide an unbiased and quantitative description of the X-ray source population at these fluxes and in various X-ray energy bands.
Methods. We present the XMM-Newton Medium sensitivity Survey (XMS), including a total of 318 X-ray sources found among the serendipitous content of 25 XMM-Newton target fields. The XMS comprises four largely overlapping source samples selected at soft (0.5−2 keV), intermediate
(0.5−4.5 keV), hard (2−10 keV) and ultra-hard (4.5−7.5 keV) bands, the first three of them being flux-limited.
Results. We report on the optical identification of the XMS samples, complete to 85−95%. At the flux levels sampled by the XMS we find that the X-ray sky is largely dominated by Active Galactic Nuclei. The fraction of stars in soft X-ray selected samples is below 10%, and only a few per cent for hard selected samples. We find that the fraction of optically obscured objects in the AGN population stays constant at around 15−20% for soft and intermediate band selected X-ray sources, over 2 decades of flux. The fraction of obscured objects amongst the AGN population is
larger (∼35−45%) in the hard or ultra-hard selected samples, and constant across a similarly wide flux range. The distribution in X-ray-to-optical flux ratio is a strong function of the selection band, with a larger fraction of sources with high values in hard selected samples. Sources with X-ray-to-optical flux ratios in excess of 10 are dominated by obscured AGN, but with a significant contribution from unobscured AGN.
Data sourced from Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge
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