Multi-wavelength observations of serendipitous Chandra X-ray sources in the field of A2390

Abstract

We present optical spectra and near-infrared imaging of a sample of serendipitous X-ray sources detected in the field of Chandra observations of the A2390 cluster of galaxies. The sources have 0.5-7 keV fluxes of 0.6-8 x 10^{-14} erg cm^{-2} s^{-1} and lie around the break in the 2-10 keV source counts. They therefore are typical of sources dominating the X-ray Background in that band. Twelve of the fifteen targets for which we have optical spectra show emission lines, most of which have soft X-ray spectra. Including photometric redshifts and published spectra we have redshifts for seventeen of the sources, ranging from z~0.2 up to z~3 with a peak between z=1-2. Ten of our sources have hard X-ray spectra indicating a spectral slope flatter than that of a typical unabsorbed quasar. Two hard sources that are gravitationally lensed by the foreground cluster are obscured quasars, with intrinsic 2-10 keV luminosities of 0.2-3 x 10^{45} erg/s and absorbing columns of N_H>10^{23} cm^{-2}. Both were detected by ISO, showing that the absorbed flux emerges in the far-infrared.