The NuSTAR Extragalactic Surveys: Initial Results and Catalog from the Extended Chandra Deep Field South

J. R. Mullaney, A. Del-Moro, J. Aird, D. M. Alexander, F. M. Civano, R. C. Hickox, G. B. Lansbury, M. Ajello, R. Assef, D. R. Ballantyne, M. Baloković, F. E. Bauer, W. N. Brandt, S. E. Boggs, M. Brightman, Finn Erland Christensen, A. Comastri, W. W. Craig, M. Elvis, K. ForsterP. Gandhi, B. W. Grefenstette, C. J. Hailey, F. A. Harrison, M. Koss, S. M. Lamassa, B. Luo, K. K. Madsen, S. Puccetti, C. Saez, D. Stern, E. Treister, C. M. Urry, D. R. Wik, L. Zappacosta, W. Zhang

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    Abstract

    We present the initial results and the source catalog from the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) survey of the Extended Chandra Deep Field South (hereafter, ECDFS)—currently the deepest contiguous component of the NuSTAR extragalactic survey program. The survey covers the full ≈30′ × 30′ area of this field to a maximum depth of ≈360 ks (»220 ks when corrected for vignetting at 3–24 keV), reaching sensitivity limits of »1.3 ´ 10-14 erg s-1 cm-2 (3–8 keV), »3.4 ´ 10-14 erg s-1 cm-2 (8–24 keV), and»3.0 ´ 10-14 erg s-1 cm-2 (3–24 keV). A total of 54 sources are detected over the full field, although five of these are found to lie below our significance threshold once contaminating flux from neighboring (i.e., blended) sources is taken into account. Of the remaining 49 that are significant, 19 are detected in the 8–24 keV band. The8–24 to 3–8 keV band ratios of the 12 sources that are detected in both bands span the range 0.39–1.7, corresponding to a photon index range of G » 0.5-2.3, with a median photon index of G = 1.70 ± 0.52. Theredshifts of the 49 sources in our main sample span the range z = 0.21-2.7, and their rest-frame 10–40 keVluminosities (derived from the observed 8–24 keV fluxes) span the range L10 40 keV (0.7 300) 10 erg s» - ´ 43 1 -- ,sampling below the “knee” of the X-ray luminosity function out to z ~ 0.8-1. Finally, we identify oneNuSTAR source that has neither a Chandra nor an XMM-Newton counterpart, but that shows evidence of nuclearactivity at infrared wavelengths and thus may represent a genuine, new X-ray source detected by NuSTAR in the ECDFS.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number184
    JournalAstrophysical Journal
    Volume808
    Issue number2
    Number of pages20
    ISSN0004-637X
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2015

    Keywords

    • Astronomical databases: miscellaneous
    • Galaxies: active
    • Galaxies: evolution
    • X-rays: galaxies
    • X-rays: general

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