English

The NuSTAR Extragalactic Surveys: Overview and Catalog from the COSMOS Field

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2015-11-18 v1

Abstract

To provide the census of the sources contributing to the X-ray background peak above 10 keV, NuSTAR is performing extragalactic surveys using a three-tier "wedding cake" approach. We present the NuSTAR survey of the COSMOS field, the medium sensitivity and medium area tier, covering 1.7 deg2 and overlapping with both Chandra and XMM-Newton data. This survey consists of 121 observations for a total exposure of ~3 Ms. To fully exploit these data, we developed a new detection strategy, carefully tested through extensive simulations. The survey sensitivity at 20% completeness is 5.9, 2.9 and 6.4 x 10^-14 erg/cm2/s in the 3-24 keV, 3-8 keV and 8-24 keV bands, respectively. By combining detections in 3 bands, we have a sample of 91 NuSTAR sources with 10^42 -10^45.5 erg/s luminosities and redshift z=0.04-2.5. Thirty two sources are detected in the 8-24 keV band with fluxes ~100 times fainter than sources detected by Swift-BAT. Of the 91 detections, all but four are associated with a Chandra and/or XMM-Newton point-like counterpart. One source is associated with an extended lower energy X-ray source. We present the X-ray (hardness ratio and luminosity) and optical-to-X-ray properties. The observed fraction of candidate Compton-thick AGN measured from the hardness ratio is between 13-20%. We discuss the spectral properties of NuSTAR J100259+0220.6 (ID 330) at z=0.044, with the highest hardness ratio in the entire sample. The measured column density exceeds 10^24 /cm2, implying the source is Compton-thick. This source was not previously recognized as such without the >10 keV data.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1511.04185,
  title  = {The NuSTAR Extragalactic Surveys: Overview and Catalog from the COSMOS Field},
  author = {F. Civano and R. C. Hickox and S. Puccetti and A. Comastri and J. R. Mullaney and L. Zappacosta and S. M. LaMassa and J. Aird and D. M. Alexander and D. R. Ballantyne and F. E. Bauer and W. N. Brandt and S. E. Boggs and F. E. Christensen and W. W. Craig and A. Del-Moro and M. Elvis and K. Forster and P. Gandhi and B. W. Grefenstette and C. J. Hailey and F. A. Harrison and G. B. Lansbury and B. Luo and K. Madsen and C. Saez and D. Stern and E. Treister and M. C. Urry and D. R. Wik and W. Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.04185},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

20 pages, published in the Astrophysical Journal