Completing the census of heavily obscured AGN with Athena
Abstract
Athena is a space observatory proposed to ESA to implement the science theme "The hot and energetic Universe", via high-troughput X-ray imaging and spectroscopy. Among the many topics in which Athena will provide a quantum leap, is uncovering the "hidden" population of highly obscured Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), thought to be the sites of most of the energy emitted by accretion throughout the history of the Universe. We concentrate on AGN at z=1-3 and with 2-10keV luminosities close to L*∼5e44erg/s, at the heyday of black hole growth and star formation. We show that Athena will be able to recognize and parameterise by itself a good fraction of the moderately Compton-Thick AGN (CT, N_H>1.5e24cm-2) detected in 1Ms exposures, effectively constraining the properties of many more, including their CT nature and their X-ray luminosities. With the proposed multi-tiered survey strategy, Athena will also be able to distinguish accurately between different models for X-ray evolution of AGN. The dependence of this performance on several de-scoping options is also explored and quantified. Athena will revolutionize by itself our understanding of the darkest side of the AGN Universe and, in collaboration with other upcoming facilities, unveil currently hidden connections between AGN growth and galaxy formation.
- Publication:
-
The X-ray Universe 2014
- Pub Date:
- July 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014xru..confE..45C