The Chandra Deep Field-North Survey and the Cosmic X-ray Background

Abstract

Chandra has performed a 1.4 Ms survey centred on the Hubble Deep Field-North (HDF-N), probing the X-ray Universe 55-550 times deeper than was possible with pre-Chandra missions. We describe the detected point and extended X-ray sources and discuss their overall multiwavelength (optical, infrared, submillimeter, and radio) properties. Special attention is paid to the HDF-N X-ray sources, luminous infrared starburst galaxies, optically faint X-ray sources, and high-to-extreme redshift AGN. We also describe how stacking analyses have been used to probe the average X-ray emission properties of normal and starburst galaxies at cosmologically interesting distances. Finally, we discuss plans to extend the survey and argue that a 5-10 Ms Chandra survey would lay key groundwork for future missions such as XEUS and Generation-X.