The HELLAS2XMM survey.VIII. Optical identifications of the extended sample
Abstract
(Abridged) We present the results of the photometric and spectroscopic identification of 110 hard X-ray selected sources (6e-15<F(2-10 keV)<4e-14 cgs) from 5 additional XMM-Newton fields, nearly doubling the original HELLAS2XMM sample. We spectroscopically identified 59 new sources, bringing the completeness of the full HELLAS2XMM sample to ~70%. We found optical counterparts for 214 out of the 232 X-ray sources of the full sample down to R~25. We measure the flux and luminosity of the [OIII](5007) emission line for 59 such sources. Results. We use the full HELLAS2XMM and the CDF samples to estimate the LogN-LogS and the obscured QSO surface densities down to F(2-10 keV)~1e-14 and 1e-15 cgs. At these flux limits the fraction of X-ray selected obscured and unobscured QSO turns out to be similar. Since X-ray selection misses most Compton thick AGN, the number of obscured QSO may well outnumber that of unobscured QSOs. We find that hard X-ray selected AGNs with detected [OIII] emission span a wide range of L(2-10 keV)/L[OIII] with a median higher than that of optically selected AGNs, suggesting that optically selected samples are at least partly incomplete, and/or [OIII] emission is not a perfect isotropic indicator of the nuclear power. Differently from narrow-line AGNs in the same z interval, the 7 XBONGs candidates in the sample have L(2-10 keV)/L[OIII]> 1000, while their Lx, L(R) and Nh are similar. This suggests that while the central engine of narrow-line AGNs and XBONGs looks similar, the narrow-line region in XBONGs could be strongly inhibited or obscured.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0612023,
title = {The HELLAS2XMM survey.VIII. Optical identifications of the extended sample},
author = {F. Cocchia and F. Fiore and C. Vignali and M. Mignoli and M. Brusa and A. Comastri and C. Feruglio and A. Baldi and N. Carangelo and P. Ciliegi and V. D'Elia and F. La Franca and R. Maiolino and G. Matt and S. Molendi and G. C. Perola and S. Puccetti},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0612023},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in A&A, 18 pages, 19 figures