XMMFITCAT: The XMM-Newton spectral-fit database

TL;DR

XMMFITCAT is a comprehensive database of spectral fitting results for over 114,000 X-ray sources detected by XMM-Newton, enabling large-scale analysis of their spectral properties across multiple energy bands.

Contribution

It provides the first extensive spectral-fit database for XMM-Newton sources, including detailed parameters and models, facilitating advanced X-ray source studies.

Findings

Spectral-fit results for over 114,000 detections

Application of six spectral models across energy bands

Enables large sample analysis of X-ray spectral properties

Abstract

The XMM-Newton spectral-fit database (XMMFITCAT) is a catalogue of spectral fitting results for the source detections within the XMM-Newton Serendipitous source catalogue with more than 50 net (background-subtracted) counts per detector in the 0.5-10 keV energy band. Its most recent version, constructed from the latest version of the XMM-Newton catalogue, the 3XMM Data Release 4 (3XMM-DR4), contains spectral-fitting results for $\gtrsim$ 114,000 detections, corresponding to $\simeq$ 78,000 unique sources. Three energy bands are defined and used in the construction of XMMFITCAT: Soft (0.5-2 keV), Hard (2-10 keV), and Full (0.5-10 keV) bands. Six spectral models, three simple and three more complex models, were implemented and applied to the spectral data. Simple models are applied to all sources, whereas complex models are applied to observations with more than 500 counts (30%). XMMFITCAT includes best-fit parameters and errors, fluxes, and goodness of fit estimates for all fitted models. XMMFITCAT has been conceived to provide the astronomical community with a tool to construct large and representative samples of X-ray sources by allowing source selection according to spectral properties, as well as characterise the X-ray properties of samples selected in different wavelengths. We present in this paper the main details of the construction of this database, and summarise its main characteristics.