The Missing X-ray Background

The fraction of the hard X-ray background (XRB) resolved into individual sources by the deep Chandra and XMM-Newton surveys strongly depends on the adopted energy range and decreases with increasing energy. As a consequence, the nature of the sources of the even harder (>10 keV) XRB remains observationally poorly constrained. I will briefly discuss the need for X-ray observations above 10 keV.Comment: to appear in the proceedings of 'Multiwavelength AGN surveys' (Cozumel, December 8-12 2003), ed. R. Maiolino and R. Mujic

ASCA spectroscopy of the luminous infrared galaxy NGC6240: X-ray emission from a starburst and a buried active nucleus

We present an X-ray spectral study of the prototype far-infrared galaxy NGC6240 from ASCA. The soft X-ray spectrum (below 2 keV) shows clear signatures of thermal emission well described with a multi-temperature optically-thin plasma, which probably originates in a powerful starburst. Strong hard X-ray emission is also detected with ASCA and its spectrum above 3 keV is extremely flat with a prominent iron K line complex, very similar to that seen in the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC1068 but about an order of magnitude more luminous [L(3-10keV)=1.4E42 erg/s]. The hard X-ray spectrum indicates that only reflected X-rays of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) buried in a heavy obscuration [N(H)>2E24 cm-2] are visible. This is evidence for an AGN in NGC6240 emitting possibly at a quasar luminosity and suggests its significant contribution to the far-infrared luminosity.Comment: 9 pages, 6 Postscript figures, to appear in MNRA

The contribution of AGN to the X-ray background: the effect of iron features

The contribution of the iron emission line, commonly detected in the X-ray spectra of Seyfert (Sey) galaxies, to the cosmic X-ray background (XRB) spectrum is evaluated in the framework of the XRB synthesis models based on AGN unification schemes. To derive the mean line properties, we have carried out a search in the literature covering a sample of about 70 AGN. When adopting line parameters in agreement with the observations, it turns out that the maximum contribution of the iron line to the XRB is less than 7% at a few keV. This is still below the present uncertainties in the XRB spectrum measurements.Comment: 21 LaTeX pages with 5 Postscript figures. Accepted for publication in New Astronom

A theoretical unifying scheme for gamma-ray bright blazars

The phenomenology of gamma-ray bright blazars can be accounted for by a sequence in the source power and intensity of the diffuse radiation field surrounding the relativistic jet. Correspondingly, the equilibrium particle distribution peaks at different energies. This leads to a trend in the observed properties: an increase of the observed power corresponds to: 1) a decrease in the frequencies of the synchrotron and inverse Compton peaks; 2) an increase in the ratio of the powers of the high and low energy spectral components. Objects along this sequence would be observationally classified respectively as high frequency BL Lac objects, low frequency BL Lac objects, highly polarized quasars and lowly polarized quasars. The proposed scheme is based on the correlations among the physical parameters derived in the present paper by applying to 51 gamma ray loud blazars two of the most accepted scenarios for the broad band emission of blazars, namely the synchrotron self--Compton and external Compton models, and explains the observational trends presented by Fossati et al. (1998) in a companion paper, dealing with the spectral energy distributions of all blazars. This gives us confidence that our scheme applies to all blazars as a class.Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures, uses mn.sty and psfig.tex. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Properties of the integrated spectrum of serendipitous 2XMM catalogue sources

Our analysis is aimed at characterizing the properties of the integrated spectrum of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) such as the ubiquity of the Fe K{\alpha} emission in AGNs and the dependence of the spectral parameters on the X-ray luminosity and redshift. We selected 2646 point sources from the 2XMM catalogue at high galactic latitude (|BII| > 25 degrees) and with the sum of EPIC-PN and EPIC-MOS 0.2-12 keV counts greater than 1000. Redshifts were obtained for 916 sources from the NED. The final sample consists of 507 AGN. Individual source spectra have been summed in the observed frame to compute the integrated spectra in different redshift and luminosity bins over the range 0<z<5. Detailed analysis of these spectra has been performed. We find that the narrow Fe K{\alpha} line at 6.4 keV is significantly detected up to z=1. The line equivalent width decreases with increasing X-ray luminosity in the 2-10 keV band (''IT effect''). The anti-correlation is characterized by the relation log(EWFe) = (1.66 +/- 0.09) + (-0.43 +/- 0.07) log(LX,44), where EWFe is the rest frame equivalent width of the neutral iron K{\alpha} line in eV and LX,44 is the 2-10 keV X-ray luminosity in units of 10^{44} erg s^{-1}. The equivalent width is nearly independent of redshift up to z ~ 0.8 with an average value of 101+/-40 (rms dispersion) eV in the luminosity range 43.5<= logLX <= 44.5. Our analysis also confirmed the hardening of the spectral indices at low luminosities implying a dependence of obscuration on luminosity. We confirm that the neutral narrow Fe K{\alpha} line is an almost ubiquitous feature of AGNs. We find compelling evidence for the ''IT effect'' over a redshift interval larger than probed in any previous study. We detect no evolution of the average rest frame equivalent width of the Fe K{\alpha} line with redshift.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, 2 Tables. A&A in pres