XMM-Newton Bright Serendipitous Survey: AGN X-Ray Spectral Properties

X-ray surveys are a key instrument in the study of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Thanks to their penetrating ability, X-rays are able to map the innermost regions close to the central super massive black hole (SMBH) as well as to detect and characterize its emission up to high redshift. This table contains results from a detailed X-ray spectral analysis of the AGN belonging to the XMM-Newton Bright Serendipitous Survey (XBS, the HEASARC Browse XMMBSS table, <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/IX/41">CDS Cat. IX/41</a>). The XBS is composed of two flux-limited samples selected in the complementary 0.5 to 4.5 and 4.5 to 7.5 keV energy bands and comprising more than 300 AGN up to redshift ~2.4. The authors have performed an X-ray analysis following two different approaches: by analyzing individually each AGN X-ray spectrum and by constructing average spectra for different AGN types. From the individual analysis, the authors find that there seems to be an anticorrelation between the spectral index and the sources' hard X-ray luminosity, such that the average photon index for the higher luminosity sources (>10<sup>44</sup> erg s<sup>-1</sup>) is significantly (>2 sigma) flatter than the average for the lower luminosity sources. They also find that the intrinsic column density distribution agrees with AGN unified schemes, although a number of exceptions are found (3% of the whole sample), which are much more common among optically classified type 2 AGN. The authors also find that the so-called "soft-excess", apart from the intrinsic absorption, constitutes the principal deviation from a power-law shape in AGN X-ray spectra and it clearly displays different characteristics, and likely a different origin, for unabsorbed and absorbed AGN. Regarding the shape of the average spectra, they find that it is best reproduced by a combination of an unabsorbed (absorbed) power law, a narrow Fe K-alpha emission line and a small (large) amount of reflection for unabsorbed (absorbed) sources. This table was created by the HEASARC in November 2011 based on <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/A+A/530/A42">CDS Catalog J/A+A/530/A42</a> files table2.dat and table3.dat. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Identifier
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/nasa.heasarc/xmmbssagn
Related Identifier https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/xmmbssagn.html
Related Identifier https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/W3Browse/w3query.pl?tablehead=name=heasarc_xmmbssagn&Action=More+Options&Action=Parameter+Search&ConeAdd=1
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://nasa.heasarc/xmmbssagn
Provenance
Creator Corral et al.
Publisher NASA/GSFC HEASARC
Publication Year 2024
OpenAccess true
Contact NASA/GSFC HEASARC help desk <heasarc-vo at athena.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics