Description
Accretion onto supermassive black holes is believed to occur mostly in obscured active galactic nuclei (AGN). Such objects are proving rather elusive in surveys of distant galaxies, including those at X-ray energies. Our main goal is to determine whether the revised IRAC criteria of Donley et al. (2012ApJ...748..142D; objects with an infrared (IR) power-law spectral shape), are effective at selecting X-ray type-2 AGN (i.e., absorbed N_H_>10^22^cm^-2^). We present the results from the X-ray spectral analysis of 147 AGN selected by cross-correlating the highest spectral quality ultra-deep XMM-Newton and the Spitzer/IRAC catalogues in the Chandra Deep Field South. Consequently it is biased towards sources with high S/N X-ray spectra. In order to measure the amount of intrinsic absorption in these sources, we adopt a simple X-ray spectral model that includes a power-law modified by intrinsic absorption at the redshift of each source and a possible soft X-ray component.
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