Heavily obscured AGN with BeppoSAX, INTEGRAL, SWIFT, XMM and Chandra: prospects for Simbol-X

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current understanding of heavily obscured Compton Thick AGN, emphasizing the potential of the upcoming Simbol-X mission to significantly advance detection and study of these sources due to its enhanced sensitivity.

Contribution

It highlights the expected improvements in detecting Compton Thick AGN with Simbol-X's increased sensitivity over previous X-ray missions.

Findings

Compton Thick AGN may constitute about 50% of absorbed AGN.

Current observations have identified only a few dozen Compton Thick AGN.

Simbol-X will improve sensitivity by over 500 times for energies above 10 keV.

Abstract

According to the latest versions of synthesis modeling of the Cosmic X-ray Background, Compton Thick AGN should represent ~50% of the total absorbed AGN population. However, despite their importance in the cosmological context, only a few dozens of Compton Thick AGN have been found and studied so far. We will briefly review this topic and discuss the improvement in this field offered by the Simbol-X mission with its leap in sensitivity (E>10 keV) of more than a factor 500 with respect to previous X-ray missions.