Optical identification of sources from the HELLAS2XMM survey

Abstract

We present preliminary results on the optical identifications of sources from the High Energy Large Area Survey performed with XMM-Newton (HELLAS2XMM). This survey covers about 3 square degrees of sky down to a 2-10 keV flux of 7 x 10^-15 erg cm-2 s-1 (Baldi & Molendi these proceedings, Baldi et al. 2001). The survey good sensitivity over a large area allows us to confirm and extend previous Chandra results about a population of X-ray luminous but optically dull galaxies emerging at 2-10 keV fluxes of about 10-14 erg cm-2 s-1. Although the statistics are still rather poor, it appears that at these X-ray fluxes the fraction of these galaxies is similar or even higher than that of narrow line AGN.