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Ranalli, P.

Publications and source records attributed to Ranalli, P..

The Chandra Deep Field-South Survey: 7 Ms Source Catalogs

We present X-ray source catalogs for the approx. 7 Ms exposure of the Chandra Deep Field-South (CDF-S), which covers a total area of 484.2 arcmin2. Utilizing WAVDETECT for initial source detection and ACIS Extract for photometric extraction and significance assessment, we create a main source catalog containing 1008 sources that are detected in up to three X-ray bands: 0.5-7.0 keV, 0.5-2.0 keV, and 2-7 keV. A supplementary source catalog is also provided, including 47 lower-significance sources that have bright (Ks < or = 23) near-infrared counterparts. We identify multiwavelength counterparts for 992 (98.4%) of the main-catalog sources, and we collect redshifts for 986 of these sources, including 653 spectroscopic redshifts and 333 photometric redshifts. Based on the X-ray and multiwavelength properties, we identify 711 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) from the main-catalog sources. Compared to the previous approx. 4 Ms CDF-S catalogs, 291 of the main-catalog sources are new detections. We have achieved unprecedented X-ray sensitivity with average flux limits over the central approx. 1 arcmin2 region of 1.9 x 10(exp -17), 6.4 x 10(exp -18), and 2.7 x 10(exp -17) erg/sq cm/s in the three X-ray bands, respectively. We provide cumulative number-count measurements observing, for the first time, that normal galaxies start to dominate the X-ray source population at the faintest 0.5-2.0 keV flux levels. The highest X-ray source density reaches approx. 50,500/sq deg, and 47% +/- 4 of these sources are AGNs (approx. 23,900/sq deg).

cosmology: observations – diffuse radiation – ↗

The Nature of the Unresolved Extragalactic Cosmic Soft X-Ray Background

In this paper we investigate the power spectrum of the unresolved 0.5-2 keV cosmic X-ray background (CXB) with deep Chandra 4-Msec (Ms) observations in the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS). We measured a signal that, on scales >30 arcsec, is significantly higher than the shot noise and is increasing with angular scale. We interpreted this signal as the joint contribution of clustered undetected sources like active galactic nuclei (AGN), galaxies and the intergalactic medium (IGM). The power of unresolved cosmic source fluctuations accounts for approximately 12 per cent of the 0.5-2 keV extragalactic CXB. Overall, our modelling predicts that approximately 20 per cent of the unresolved CXB flux is produced by low-luminosity AGN, approximately 25 per cent by galaxies and approximately 55 per cent by the IGM. We do not find any direct evidence of the so-called 'warm hot intergalactic medium' (i.e. matter with 10(exp 5) less than T less than 10(exp 7) K and density contrast delta less than 1000), but we estimated that it could produce about 1/7 of the unresolved CXB. We placed an upper limit on the space density of postulated X-ray-emitting early black holes at z greater than 7.5 and compared it with supermassive black hole evolution models.

galaxies↗