Cosmic X-ray surveys of distant active galaxies

By W. N. Brandt, D. M. Alexander. 2015

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We review results from cosmic X-ray surveys of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) over the past $$\approx 15$$≈15 years that have dramatically improved our understanding of growing supermassive black holes in the distant universe. First, we discuss the utility of such surveys for AGN investigations and the capabilities of the missions making these surveys, emphasizing Chandra, XMM-Newton, and NuSTAR. Second, we briefly describe the main cosmic X-ray surveys, the essential roles of complementary multiwavelength data, and how AGNs are selected from these surveys. We then review key results from these surveys on the AGN population and its evolution (“demographics”), the physical processes operating in AGNs (“physics”), and the interactions between AGNs and their environments (“ecology”). We conclude by describing some significant unresolved questions and prospects for advancing the field.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fefa747fd0e886b6ab978feb32b7328f534aa01b

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Citations in the corpus

BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey. V. X-Ray Properties of the Swift/BAT 70-month AGN Catalog (2017, background): “…keV have shown that the shape of the CXB is significantly flatter (with a photon index Γ ∼ 1.4, e.g., De Luca & Molendi 2004) than * cricci@astro.puc.cl 24 See Beckmann & Shrader (2012); Netzer (2013, 2015); Brandt & Alexander (2015); Ramos Almeida & Ricci (2017) for recent reviews on the subject.”
THE 2 Ms CHANDRA DEEP FIELD-NORTH SURVEY AND THE 250 Ks EXTENDED CHANDRA DEEP FIELD-SOUTH SURVEY: IMPROVED POINT-SOURCE CATALOGS (2016, background): “…aspects of growing supermassive black holes in the distant universe, e.g., the AGN population and its evolution (“demographics”), the physical processes operating in AGNs (“physics”), and the interactions between AGNs and their environments (“ecology”; see Brandt & Alexander 2015 for a review).”
The SRG/eROSITA all-sky survey (2024, unknown): “…of the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) that sit at the centres of galaxies and which may strongly influence their formation and subsequent evolution (Brandt & Hasinger 2005; Hopkins et al. 2008; Hickox et al. 2009; Fabian 2012; Alexander & Hickox 2012; Kormendy & Ho 2013; Brandt & Alexander 2015).”
Active galactic nuclei: what’s in a name? (2017, background): “…BHs at Xray energies, the majority of the AGN detected in blank-field cosmic X-ray surveys are nevertheless found to reside in massive galaxies (stellar masses >1010 M , implying MBH > 107 M ; e.g. Brusa et al. 2009; Hickox et al. 2009; Xue et al. 2010; see Brandt and Alexander 2015 for a review).”
AGN wind scaling relations and the co-evolution of black holes and galaxies (2017, background): “…AGN, with lower luminosity AGN peaking at a redshift lower than luminous QSOs (Ueda et al. 2003, 2014; Fiore et al. 2003; La Franca et al. 2005; Brandt & Hasinger 2005; Bongiorno et al. 2007; Aird et al. 2015; Brandt & Alexander 2015), mirrors that of star-forming galaxies and of massive spheroids.”
BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey. I. Spectral Measurements, Derived Quantities, and AGN Demographics (2017, background): “As the brightest AGN in the sky above 10 keV, BAT-detected AGN provide an important low redshift template as they have similar luminosities to AGN detected in deep, small area X-ray surveys which focus on higher redshift AGN (z > 1, see e.g., Brandt & Alexander 2015, and references therein).”
The cosmic evolution of massive black holes in the Horizon-AGN simulation (2016, background): “This is higher by a factor of 2–3 than in X-ray selected AGN samples (see Brandt & Alexander 2015, for a review), while it is more similar to that of Juneau et al. (2013), who adopt multi-wavelength AGN diagnostics, and of Schulze et al. (2015) who start from optically selected type-1 AGN and…”
The faint radio sky: radio astronomy becomes mainstream (2016, background): “They reached a 0.5 - 2 keV flux ∼ 2− 3× 10−16 erg cm−2 s −1, opening the way to their use for the identification of faint radio sources (and much more: Brandt & Alexander, 2015).”
THE CHANDRA COSMOS LEGACY SURVEY: OPTICAL/IR IDENTIFICATIONS (2015, background): “In the last 15 years, both Chandra and XMM-Newton satellites have been used to survey both deep and widearea fields (see Brandt & Alexander 2015 for a review).”
x-cigale: fitting AGN/galaxy SEDs from X-ray to infrared (2020, background): “X-ray observations have many advantages in AGN studies (see Brandt & Alexander 2015 for a review).”
A remarkably flat relationship between the average star formation rate and AGN luminosity for distant X-ray AGN. (2015, background): “…in the hard band (e.g. 2–8 keV), over other tracers of AGN activity, is that they are not greatly affected by the presence of obscuration and contamination effects from the host galaxy (see sections 1 and 2 of Brandt & Alexander 2015 for more details of the use of the X-ray as an AGN tracer).”