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The X-Ray Background and the AGN Luminosity Function

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2016

G. Hasinger
G. Hasinger*
Affiliation:
Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam An der Sternwarte 16 14482 Potsdam Germany

Abstract

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ROSAT deep and shallow surveys have provided an almost complete inventory of the constituents of the soft X-ray background which led to a population synthesis model for the whole X-ray background with interesting cosmological consequences. According to this model the X-ray background is the “echo” of mass accretion onto supermassive black holes, integrated over cosmic time. A new determination of the soft X-ray luminosity function of active galactic nuclei (AGN) is consistent with pure density evolution, and the comoving volume density of AGN at redshift 2–3 approaches that of local normal galaxies. This indicates that many larger galaxies contain black holes and it is likely that the bulk of the black holes was produced before most of the stars in the universe. However, only X-ray surveys in the harder energy bands, where the maximum of the energy density of the X-ray background resides, will provide the acid test of this picture.

Type
IV. Structure Formation and Dark Matter
Information
Symposium - International Astronomical Union , Volume 183: Cosmological Parameters and the Evolution of the Universe , 1999 , pp. 200 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © Kluwer 1999 

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