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Obscured AGN in Multiwavelength Surveys

Ezequiel Treister, C. M. Urry, Jeff Van Duyne, the GOODS AGN Team

astro-pharXiv:astro-ph/0411485

Abstract

Using a simple unification model for AGN, with a fixed ratio of obscured to unobscured AGN of 3:1, we explain the X-ray, optical and infrared properties of the X-ray sources in the GOODS fields. That is, the GOODS data are consistent with the existence of a large population of obscured AGN out to high redshifts. About half of these are so obscured that they are missed even by hard X-ray observations, and are detected only in deep infrared observations. The previously reported decreasing trend of obscured to total AGN ratio with increasing X-ray luminosity can be explained entirely as a selection effect.

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