Related papers: Measuring the Cosmic X-ray Background accurately
The cosmic X-ray background (CXB) is dominated by the obscured and unobscured coronal light of active galactic nuclei (AGN). At energies below 10 keV, the CXB can be well explained by models taking into account the known AGN and the…
We present a new measurement of the cosmic X-ray background (CXRB) in the 1.5-7 keV energy band, performed by exploiting the Swift X-ray telescope (XRT) data archive. We also present a CXRB spectral model in a wider energy band (1.5-200…
In this article we review the measurements and understanding of the X-ray background (XRB), discovered by Giacconi and collaborators 35 years ago. We start from the early history and the debate whether the XRB is due to a single,…
The question of the X-ray background has been largely settled over the last 10 years using the ROSAT satellite. About 70-80 % of the soft X-ray background was resolved into discrete sources, which are mainly X-ray and optically unobscured…
Direct photometric measurements of the cosmic optical background (COB) provide an important point of comparison to both other measurement methodologies and models of cosmic structure formation, and permit a cosmic consistency test with the…
We present a detailed and self-consistent modeling of the cosmic X-ray background (XRB) based on the most up-to-date X-ray luminosity functions (XLF) and evolution of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). The large body of observational results…
We have analyzed a large set of RXTE/PCA scanning and slewing observations performed between April 1996 and March 1999. We obtained the 3-20 keV spectrum of the cosmic X-ray background (CXB) by subtracting Earth-occulted observations from…
Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) unification, which implies a large number of obscured AGN, can explain the optical, infrared and X-ray content of deep multiwavelength surveys. Here, we show that the same model also successfully explains the…
We reanalyze data of HEAO1/A2 -- Cosmic X-ray Experiment -- in order to repeat the measurements of the cosmic X-ray background (CXB) intensity and accurately compare this value with other measurements of the CXB. We used the data of MED,…
The recent deep X-ray surveys at both soft (0.5--2 keV) and hard (2--10 keV) energies have greatly extended our knowledge of the X-ray source density and spectral shapes at relatively faint fluxes adding further evidence on the fact that…
The deepest extragalactic X-ray observation, the 2 Ms Chandra Deep Field North (CDF-N), resolves ~80% of the total extragalactic cosmic X-ray background (CXB) in the 1-2 keV band. Recent work has shown that 70% of the remaining CXB flux is…
We determine the cumulative spectral energy distribution (SED) of local AGN in the 3-300 keV band and compare it with the spectrum of the cosmic X-ray background (CXB) in order to test the widely accepted paradigm that the CXB is a…
The origin of the hard X-ray background (XRB) as a superposition of unabsorbed and absorbed Active Galactic Nuclei is now widely accepted as the standard model. The identification of faint X-ray sources in ROSAT, ASCA, and BeppoSAX…
It is currently established that the sources contributing to the cosmic X-ray background (CXB) emission are mainly nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN), in particular those that are obscured. Thus, it is important to fully identify the hard…
A significant number of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are observed to be hidden behind dust and gas. The distribution of material around AGNs plays an important role in modeling the cosmic X-ray background (CXB), especially the fraction of…
Notwithstanding the advent of the Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope, theoretical models predict that a significant fraction of the cosmic gamma-ray background (CGB), at the level of 20% of the currently measured value, will remain unresolved.…
We present the absolute measurement of the unresolved 0.5-8 keV cosmic X-ray background (CXB) in the Chandra Deep Fields (CDFs) North and South, the longest observations with Chandra (2 Ms and 1 Ms, respectively). We measure the unresolved…
By characterizing the contribution of stray light to large datasets from the NuSTAR X-ray observatory collected over 2012--2017, we report a measurement of the cosmic X-ray background in the 3--20 keV energy range. These data represent…
Measurements of the intensity of the cosmic X-ray background (XRB) carried out over small solid angles are subject to spatial variations due to the discrete nature of the XRB. This cosmic variance can account for the dispersion of XRB…
The Cosmic X-ray Background (CXB) is the total emission from past accretion activity onto supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN) and peaks in the hard X-ray band (30 keV). In this paper, we identify a significant selection…