We present the results of X-ray spectral analysis of 22 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with a small scattering fraction selected from the Second XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalogue using hardness ratios. They are candidates of buried AGNs, since a scattering fraction, which is a fraction of scattered emission by the circumnuclear photoionized gas with respect to direct emission, can be used to estimate the size of the opening part of an obscuring torus. Their X-ray spectra are modeled by a combination of a power law with a photon index of 1.5-2 absorbed by a column density of 10^23-24 cm^-2, an unabsorbed power law, narrow Gaussian lines, and some additional soft components. We find that scattering fractions of 20 among 22 objects are less than a typical value (3%) for Seyfert2s observed so far. In particular, those of eight objects are smaller than 0.5%, which are in the range for buried AGNs found in recent hard X-ray surveys. Moreover, [O III] lambda5007 luminosities at given X-ray luminosities for some objects are smaller than those for Seyfert2s previously known. This fact could be interpreted as a smaller size of optical narrow emission line regions produced in the opening direction of the obscuring torus. These results indicate that they are strong candidates for the AGN buried in a very geometrically thick torus.
Variations of the X-ray spectral slope have been found in many Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) at moderate luminosities and redshifts, typically showing a "softer when brighter" behaviour. However, similar studies are not usually performed for high-luminosity AGNs. We present an analysis of the spectral variability based on a large sample of quasars in wide intervals of luminosity and redshift, measured at several different epochs, extracted from the fifth release of the XMM Newton Serendipitous Source Catalogue. Our analysis confirms a "softer when brighter" trend also for our sample, extending …
We report the detection of a distant star-forming galaxy, ALMA J010748.3-173028, which is identified by a 13-sigma emission line at 99.75 GHz (SdV = 3.1 Jy km/s), behind the nearby merging galaxies VV114 using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Band 3. We also find an 880-um counterpart with ALMA Band 7 (S_880um = 11.2 mJy). A careful comparison of the intensities of the line and the continuum suggests that the line is a redshifted 12CO transition. A photometric redshift analysis using the infrared to radio data favors a CO redshift of z = 2.467, although z = 3.622 is acce…
The variability of the X-ray spectra of active galactic nuclei (AGN) usually includes a change of the spectral slope. This has been investigated for a small sample of local AGNs by Sobolewska and Papadakis, who found that slope variations are well correlated with flux variations, and that spectra are typically steeper in the bright phase (softer when brighter behaviour). Not much information is available for the spectral variability of high-luminosity AGNs and quasars. In order to investigate this phenomenon, we use data from the XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalogue, Data Release 5, which…
Context. X-ray spectral variability analyses of active galactic nuclei (AGN) with moderate luminosities and redshifts typically show a softer when brighter behaviour. Such a trend has rarely been investigated for high-luminosity AGNs ($ L_{bol}\gtrsim 10^{44}$ erg/s), nor for a wider redshift range (e.g. $0\lesssim z\lesssim 5$). Aims. We present an analysis of spectral variability based on a large sample of 2,700 quasars, measured at several different epochs, extracted from the fifth release of the XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalogue. Methods. We quantified the spectral variability thro…
We present the second Multi-Epoch X-ray Serendipitous AGN Sample (MEXSAS2), extracted from the 6th release of the XMM Serendipitous Source Catalogue (XMMSSC-DR6), cross-matched with Sloan Digital Sky Survey quasar catalogues DR7Q and DR12Q. Our sample also includes the available measurements for masses, bolometric luminosities, and Eddington ratios. Analyses of the ensemble structure function and spectral variability are presented, together with their dependences on such parameters. We confirm a decrease of the structure function with the X-ray luminosity, and find a weak dependence on the bla…
A direct consequence of hierarchical galaxy formation is the existence of dual supermassive black holes (SMBHs), which may be preferentially triggered as active galactic nuclei (AGN) during galaxy mergers. Despite decades of searching, however, dual AGNs are extremely rare, and most have been discovered serendipitously. Using the all-sky WISE survey, we identified a population of over 100 morphologically identified interacting galaxies or mergers that display red mid-infrared colors often associated in extragalactic sources with powerful AGNs. The vast majority of these advanced mergers are op…
The XMM-Newton spectral-fit database is an ongoing ESA funded project aimed to construct a catalogue of spectral-fitting results for all the sources within the XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue for which spectral data products have been pipeline-extracted (~ 120,000 X-ray source detections). The fundamental goal of this project is to provide the astronomical community with a tool to construct large and representative samples of X-ray sources by allowing source selection according to spectral properties.
We present a catalog of 26 faint submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) in the XMM-LSS field identified by cross-matching serendipitously detected sources in archival ALMA Band 6 and 7 data with multi-band near-infrared (NIR) and optical data from the Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey, the VISTA Deep Extragalactic Survey, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Large Survey, and the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program. Of the 26 SMGs in our sample, 15 are identified here for the first time. The majority of the sources in our sample (16/26) have faint submm fluxes ($0.1\,{\rm m…
The third version of the XMM-Newton serendipitous catalogue (3XMM), containing almost half million sources, is now the largest X-ray catalogue. However, its full scientific potential remains untapped due to the lack of distance information (i.e. redshifts) for the majority of its sources. Here we present XMMPZCAT, a catalogue of photometric redshifts (photo-z) for 3XMM sources. We searched for optical counterparts of 3XMM-DR6 sources outside the Galactic plane in the SDSS and Pan-STARRS surveys, with the addition of near- (NIR) and mid-infrared (MIR) data whenever possible (2MASS, UKIDSS, VIST…
Observations and theoretical simulations suggest that a significant fraction of merger-triggered accretion onto supermassive black holes is highly obscured, particularly in late-stage galaxy mergers, when the black hole is expected to grow most rapidly. Starting with the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer all-sky survey, we identified a population of galaxies whose morphologies suggest ongoing interaction and which exhibit red mid-infrared colors often associated with powerful active galactic nuclei (AGNs). In a follow-up to our pilot study, we now present Chandra/ACIS and XMM-Newton X-ray ob…
In this paper the results of matching the RAdial Velocity Experiment (RAVE), a spectroscopic Southern hemisphere survey (9 $ < I_{DENIS} <$ 12), and XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalogue (3XMM) are presented. The latest data releases of RAVE and XMM were matched and a X-ray RAVE catalogue of 1071 stars was obtained. Then the catalogue was checked for possible Gould Belt (GB) members. We obtained a subsample of 10 stars that meet the GB membership criteria. This subsample and GB member candidates were tested photometrically and kinematically. Among the members there are two BY Dra type vari…
We report a new sample of obscured active galactic nuclei (AGNs) selected from the XMM serendipitous source and AKARI point-source catalogs. We match X-ray sources with infrared (18 and 90 micron) sources located at |b|>10 deg to create a sample consisting of 173 objects. Their optical classifications and absorption column densities measured by X-ray spectra are compiled and study efficient selection criteria to find obscured AGNs. We apply the criteria (1) X-ray hardness ratio defined by using the 2-4.5 keV and 4.5-12 keV bands >-0.1 and (2) EPIC-PN count rate (CR) in the 0.2-12 keV to infrar…
A Serendipitous NuSTAR Detection of a Giant Radio Source Harboring an Obscured Active Galactic Nucleus
Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA)（大学间天文学与天体物理中心）；Università di Bologna（博洛尼亚大学）；Clemson University（克莱姆森大学）；INAF, Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna（意大利国家天体物理研究所，博洛尼亚天文与空间科学观测站）；California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；Fakultät für Physik, Universität Bielefeld（比勒费尔德大学物理学院）；Department of Physics, Assam Don Bosco University（阿萨姆唐·波斯科大学物理系）；Department of Physics, Ashoka University（阿肖卡大学物理系）；School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham（伯明翰大学物理与天文学院）
The XMM Cluster Archive Super Survey (X-CLASS) is a serendipitously-detected X-ray-selected sample of 845 galaxy clusters based on 2774 XMM archival observations and covering approximately 90 deg$^2$ spread across the high-Galactic latitude ($|b|>20$ deg) sky. The primary goal of this survey is to produce a well-selected sample of galaxy clusters on which cosmological analyses can be performed. This article presents the photometric redshift followup of a high signal-to-noise subset of 266 of these clusters with declination $δ<+20$ deg with GROND, a seven channel ($grizJHK$) simultaneous imager…
We present the results of optical spectroscopy for 19 quasar candidates at photometric redshifts $\zphot \gtrsim 3$, \Nobs \ of which enter into the Khorunzhev et al.~(2016) catalog (K16). This is a catalog of quasar candidates and known type 1 quasars selected among the X-ray sources of the \textit{3XMM-DR4}catalog of the XMM-Newton serendipitous survey. We have performed spectroscopy for a quasi-random sample of new candidates at the 1.6-m \Azt \ telescope of the Sayan Solar Observatory and the 6-m BTA telescope of the Special Astrophysical Observatory. The spectra at \Azt \ were taken with …
The normalized excess variance is a popular method used by many authors to estimate the variability of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), especially in the X-ray band. We show that this estimator is affected by the cosmological time dilation, so that it should be appropriately corrected when applied to AGN samples distributed in wide redshift intervals. We propose a formula to modify this estimator, based on the use of the structure function. To verify the presence of the cosmological effect and the reliability of the proposed correction, we use data extracted from the XMM-Newton Serendipitous Sou…
We identify sources with extremely hard X-ray spectra (i.e., with photon indices of Gamma<0.6 in the 13 sq. deg. NuSTAR serendipitous survey, to search for the most highly obscured AGNs detected at >10 keV. Eight extreme NuSTAR sources are identified, and we use the NuSTAR data in combination with lower energy X-ray observations (from Chandra, Swift XRT, and XMM-Newton) to characterize the broad-band (0.5-24 keV) X-ray spectra. We find that all of the extreme sources are highly obscured AGNs, including three robust Compton-thick (CT; N_H > 1.5e24 cm^-2) AGNs at low redshift (z<0.1), and a like…
Identification of high-redshift X-ray active galactic nuclei in the 4XMM-DR11 serendipitous catalogue using DES data: Comparative analysis with optically-selected QSOs
We present a galaxy cluster survey based on XMM-Newton observations that are located in Stripe 82 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The survey covers an area of 11.25 deg$^2$. The X-ray cluster candidates were selected as serendipitously extended detected sources from the third XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue (3XMM-DR5). A cross-correlation of the candidate list that comprises 94 objects with recently published X-ray and optically selected cluster catalogues provided optical confirmations and redshift estimates for about half of the candidate sample. We present a catalogue of X…
Although absorbed quasars are extremely important for our understanding of the energetics of the Universe, the main physical parameters of their central engines are still poorly known. In this work we present and study a complete sample of 14 quasars (QSOs) that are absorbed in the X-rays (column density NH>4x10^21 cm-2 and X-ray luminosity L(2-10 keV)>10^44 ergs/s; XQSO2) belonging to the XMM-Newton Bright Serendipitous Survey (XBS). From the analysis of their ultraviolet-to-mid-infrared spectral energy distribution we can separate the nuclear emission from the host galaxy contribution, obtai…
We present Chandra and optical observations of a candidate dual AGN discovered serendipitously while searching for recoiling black holes via a cross-correlation between the serendipitous XMM source catalog (2XMMi) and SDSS-DR7 galaxies with a separation no larger than ten times the sum of their Petrosian radii. The system has a stellar mass ratio M$_{1}$/M$_{2}\approx 0.7$. One of the galaxies (Source 1) shows clear evidence for AGN activity in the form of hard X-ray emission and optical emission-line diagnostics typical of AGN ionisation. The nucleus of the other galaxy (Source 2) has a soft …
The X-ray photon index Eddington ratio relation in radio-quiet quasars from XMM-Newton and SDSS
LUX, CNRS UMR 8262（卢浮宫宇宙学与天体物理联合实验室，法国国家科学研究中心第8262号联合研究单位）；Observatoire de Paris（巴黎天文台）；National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics（国家天文地球物理研究所）；Science Faculty, Helwan University（开罗赫尔万大学理学院）；Science Faculty, Fayoum University（法尤姆大学理学院）
Most investigations of the X-ray variability of active galactic nuclei (AGN) have been concentrated on the detailed analyses of individual, nearby sources. A relatively small number of studies have treated the ensemble behaviour of the more general AGN population in wider regions of the luminosity-redshift plane. We want to determine the ensemble variability properties of a rich AGN sample, called Multi-Epoch XMM Serendipitous AGN Sample (MEXSAS), extracted from the fifth release of the XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalogue (XMMSSC-DR5), with redshift between 0.1 and 5, and X-ray luminosit…
The observed relation between the X-ray radiation from AGNs, originating in the corona, and the optical/UV radiation from the disk is usually described by the anticorrelation between the UV to X-ray slope alpha_ox and the UV luminosity. Many factors can affect this relation, including: enhanced X-ray emission associated with the jets of radio-loud AGNs; X-ray absorption associated with the UV Broad Absorption Line (BAL) outflows; other X-ray absorption not associated with BALs; intrinsic X-ray weakness; UV and X-ray variability, and non-simultaneity of UV and X-ray observations. The separation…
Variability in the X-rays is a key ingredient in understanding and unveiling active galactic nuclei (AGN) properties. In this band flux variations occur on short time scales (hours) as well as on larger times scales. While short time scale variability is often investigated in single source studies, only few works are able to explore flux variation on very long time scales.This work provides a statistical analysis of the AGN long term X-ray variability. We study variability on the largest time interval ever investigated for the 0.2-2 keV band, up to $\sim 20$ years rest-frame for a sample of 22…
We report on the discovery of an ultrasoft X-ray transient source, 3XMM J152130.7+074916. It was serendipitously detected in an XMM-Newton observation on 2000 August 23, and its location is consistent with the center of the galaxy SDSS J152130.72+074916.5 (z=0.17901 and d_L=866 Mpc). The high-quality X-ray spectrum can be fitted with a thermal disk with an apparent inner disk temperature of 0.17 keV and a rest-frame 0.24-11.8 keV unabsorbed luminosity of ~5e43 erg/s, subject to a fast-moving warm absorber. Short-term variability was also clearly observed, with the spectrum being softer at lowe…
While theory and simulations indicate that galaxy mergers play an important role in the cosmological evolution of accreting black holes and their host galaxies, samples of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) in galaxies at close separations are still small. In order to increase the sample of AGN pairs, we undertook an archival project to investigate the X-ray properties of a SDSS-selected sample of 32 galaxy pairs with separations $\le$150 kpc containing one optically-identified AGN, that were serendipitously observed by XMM-Newton. We discovered only one X-ray counterpart among the optically classif…
We present the first full catalog and science results for the NuSTAR serendipitous survey. The catalog incorporates data taken during the first 40 months of NuSTAR operation, which provide ~20Ms of effective exposure time over 331 fields, with an areal coverage of 13 sq deg, and 497 sources detected in total over the 3-24 keV energy range. There are 276 sources with spectroscopic redshifts and classifications, largely resulting from our extensive campaign of ground-based spectroscopic followup. We characterize the overall sample in terms of the X-ray, optical, and infrared source properties. T…
SPIDERS (SPectroscopic IDentification of eROSITA Sources) is an SDSS-IV survey running in parallel to the eBOSS cosmology project. SPIDERS will obtain optical spectroscopy for large numbers of X-ray-selected AGN and galaxy cluster members detected in wide area eROSITA, XMM-Newton and ROSAT surveys. We describe the methods used to choose spectroscopic targets for two sub-programmes of SPIDERS: X-ray selected AGN candidates detected in the ROSAT All Sky and the XMM-Newton Slew surveys. We have exploited a Bayesian cross-matching algorithm, guided by priors based on mid-IR colour-magnitude inform…
We have compiled a catalog of 903 candidates for type 1 quasars at redshifts 3<z<5.5 selected among the X-ray sources of the serendipitous XMM-Newton survey presented in the 3XMM-DR4 catalog (the median X-ray flux is 5x10^{-15} erg/s/cm^2 the 0.5-2 keV energy band) and located at high Galactic latitudes >20 deg in Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) fields with a total area of about 300 deg^2. Photometric SDSS data as well infrared 2MASS and WISE data were used to select the objects. We selected the point sources from the photometric SDSS catalog with a magnitude error Delta z<0.2 and a color i-z<…
We have discovered an ultrasoft X-ray transient source, 2XMMi J184725.1-631724, which was detected serendipitously in two XMM-Newton observations in the direction of the center of the galaxy IC 4765-f01-1504 at a redshift of 0.0353. These two observations were separated by 211 days, with the 0.2-10 keV absorbed flux increasing by a factor of about 9. Their spectra are best described by a model dominated by a thermal disk or a single-temperature blackbody component (contributing >80% of the flux) plus a weak power-law component. The thermal emission has a temperature of a few tens of eV, and th…
Population studies of the extragalactic objects are a major part of the universe large-scale structure study. Apart from radio, infrared, and visible wavelength bands, observations and further identification of extragalactic objects such as galaxies, quasars, blazers, liners, and active star burst regions are also conducted in the X-ray and gamma bands. In this paper we make identification and cross-correlate of the infrared and X-ray observational data, build a distribution of a selected sample sources by types and attempted to analyze types of the extragalactic objects at distances up to z =…
