A wide search of obscured active galactic nuclei using XMM-newton and WISE

Abstract

We use the WISE all sky survey observations to look for counterparts of hard X-ray selected sources from the XMM-Newton-SDSS survey. We then measure the 12 μm luminosity of the AGN by decomposing their optical to infrared SEDs with a host and an AGN component and compare it to the X-ray luminosity and their expected intrinsic relation. This way we select 20 X-ray under-luminous heavily obscured candidates and examine their X-ray and optical properties in more detail. We find evidence for a Compton-thick nucleus for six sources, a number lower than what expected from X-ray background synthesis models, which shows the limitations of our method. Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2014.