Most Hard-X-Ray-Selected Quasars in the Chandra Deep Fields are Obscured

Wang, J. X.; Jiang, P.; Zheng, Z. Y.; Tozzi, P.; Norman, C.; Giacconi, R.; Gilli, R.; Hasinger, G.; Kewley, L.; Mainieri, V.; Nonino, M.; Rosati, P.; Streblyanska, A.; Szokoly, G.; Zirm, A.; Zheng, W.
Referencia bibliográfica

The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 657, Issue 1, pp. 95-101.

Fecha de publicación:
3
2007
Número de autores
16
Número de autores del IAC
0
Número de citas
8
Número de citas referidas
7
Descripción
Measuring the population of obscured quasars is one of the key issues in understanding the evolution of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). With a redshift completeness of 99%, the X-ray sources detected in the Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S) provide the best sample for this issue. In this paper, we study the population of obscured quasars in CDF-S by choosing the 4-7 keV selected sample, which is less biased by the intrinsic X-ray absorption. The 4-7 keV band-selected samples also filter out most of the X-ray-faint sources with too few counts, for which the measurements of NH and LX have very large uncertainties. Simply adopting the best-fit L2-10 keV and NH, we find that 71%+/-19% (20 out of 28) of the quasars (with intrinsic L2-10 keV>1044 ergs s-1) are obscured with NH>1022 cm-2. Taking into account the uncertainties in the measurements of both NH and LX, conservative lower and upper limits for the fraction are 54% (13 out 24) and 84% (31 out 37). In the Chandra Deep Field North, the number is 29%; however, this is mainly due to the redshift incompleteness. We estimate a fraction of ~50%-63% after correcting for the redshift incompleteness with a straightforward approach. Our results robustly confirm the existence of a large population of obscured quasars.