X-ray Luminosity Functions of Active Galactic Nuclei

Abstract

In this proceedings paper, I overview the current status of the X-ray luminosity function of AGNs in the soft (0.5-2 keV) band, extended using XMM-Newton and Chandra survey data. We found that the number density of low luminosity AGNs peaks later in the history of the universe (z~1) than the that of high luminosity AGNs (z~1.7-3). I also describe the basic results of a spectroscopic followup project of a complete HEAO-1 hard X-ray limited sample of AGNs using ASCA and XMM-Newton and present separate intrinsic hard X-ray luminosity functions for unabsorbed and absorbed AGNs. We found that the absorbed AGN XLF drops more rapidly at high luminosities, indicating a deficiency of absorbed luminous AGNs.