Related papers: The cosmic X-ray background: abundance and evoluti…
Deep X-ray surveys have shown that the cosmic X-ray background (XRB) is largely due to the accretion onto supermassive black holes, integrated over the cosmic time. These surveys have resolved more than 80% of the 0.1-10 keV X-ray…
The cosmic X-ray background (CXB), which peaks at an energy of ~30 keV, is produced primarily by emission from accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs). The CXB therefore serves as a constraint on the integrated SMBH growth in the…
The spectrum of the hard X-ray background records the history of accretion processes integrated over the cosmic time. Several observational and theoretical evidences indicate that a significant fraction of the energy density is obscured by…
Deep X-ray surveys have shown that the cosmic X-ray background (XRB) is largely due to accretion onto supermassive black holes, integrated over cosmic time. However, the characteristic hard spectrum of the XRB can only be explained if most…
Deep X-ray surveys have shown that the cosmic X-ray background (XRB) is largely due to the accretion onto supermassive black holes, integrated over the cosmic time. These surveys have resolved more than 80% of the 0.1-10 keV X-ray…
The Cosmic X-ray background carries the information of cosmic accretion onto super-massive black holes. The intensity at its peak can be used to constrain the integrated space density of highly obscured AGNs. Determining the shape and…
ROSAT deep and shallow surveys have provided an almost complete inventory of the constituents of the soft X-ray background which led to a population synthesis model for the whole X-ray background with interesting cosmological consequences.…
Deep X-ray surveys have shown that the cosmic X-ray background (XRB) is largely due to the accretion onto supermassive black holes, integrated over cosmic time. The ROSAT, Chandra and XMM-Newton satellites have resolved more than 80% of the…
Significant progress has been made in the last few years on understanding how supermassive black holes form and grow. In this paper, we begin by reviewing the spectral signatures of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) ranging from radio to hard…
It is widely believed that most of the cosmic X-ray background (XRB) is produced by a vast, hitherto undetected population of obscured AGN. Deep X-ray surveys with Chandra and XMM will soon test this hypothesis. Similarly, recent sub-mm…
While it is understood that the origin of the Cosmic X-ray Background (CXRB) can be explained in terms of a combination of obscured and unobscured AGN, the identity of these obscured AGN showing up in large numbers at faint fluxes remains…
Ever since the discovery of the first Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), substantial observational and theoretical effort has been invested into understanding how massive black holes have evolved across cosmic time. Circum-nuclear obscuration is…
Large extragalactic surveys allow us to trace, in a statistical sense, how supermassive black holes, their host galaxies, and their dark matter halos evolve together over cosmic time, and so explore the consequences of AGN feedback on…
Supermassive black holes underwent periods of exponential growth during which we seem them as quasars in the distant Universe. The summed emission from these quasars generates the cosmic X-ray background, the spectrum of which has been used…
The deep X-ray surveys performed by the two major X-ray observatories on flight, Chandra and XMM, are being resolving the bulk of the cosmic X-ray background (XRB) in the 2-10 keV energy band, where the sky flux is dominated by…
We provide a highly concise overview of what X-ray surveys and their multiwavelength follow-up have revealed about the nature of the cosmic X-ray background (CXRB) and its constituent sources. We first describe early global studies of the…
Deep surveys of the cosmic X-ray background are reviewed in the context of observational progress enabled by the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission-Newton. The sources found by deep surveys are described along with…
We discuss the central role played by X-ray studies to reconstruct the past history of formation and evolution of supermassive Black Holes (BHs), and the role they played in shaping the properties of their host galaxies. We shortly review…
Major galaxy mergers are thought to play an important part in fuelling the growth of supermassive black holes. However, observational support for this hypothesis is mixed, with some studies showing a correlation between merging galaxies and…
Observations at high energies yield important information on the structure and nature of AGN; when coupled with deep optical and near-infrared (photometric and spectroscopic) follow-up, they provide constraints on the mass of the growing…