High-precision multi-band measurements of the angular clustering of X-ray sources

TL;DR

This study measures the angular clustering of X-ray sources across multiple energy bands, revealing insights into their environments, dark matter halo associations, and implications for AGN activity lifetimes.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed measurement of the two-point angular correlation function for a large X-ray source sample across three energy bands, linking clustering to AGN properties.

Findings

Significant positive clustering in soft and hard bands.

Clustering strength depends on flux limit.

Obscured and unobscured AGN share similar environments.

Abstract

In this paper we present the two-point angular correlation function of the X-ray source population of 1063 XMM-Newton observations at high Galactic latitudes, comprising up to ~30000 sources over a sky area of 125.5 sq. deg, in three energy bands: 0.5-2 (soft), 2-10 (hard), and 4.5-10 (ultrahard) keV. We have measured the angular clustering of our survey and find significant positive clustering signals in the soft and hard bands, and a marginal clustering detection in the ultrahard band. We find dependency of the clustering strength on the flux limit and no significant differences in the clustering properties between sources with high hardness ratios and those with low hardness ratios. Our results show that obscured and unobscured objects share similar clustering properties and therefore they both reside in similar environments, in agreement with the unified model of AGN. We deprojected the angular clustering parameters via Limber's equation to compute their typical spatial lengths. From that we have inferred the typical mass of the dark matter haloes in which AGN at redshifts of ~1 are embedded. The short AGN lifetimes derived suggest that AGN activity might be a transient phase that can be experienced several times by a large fraction of galaxies throughout their lives.