Bolometric luminosities and Eddington ratios of X-ray selected active galactic nuclei in the XMM-COSMOS survey
Author(s)
Date Issued
2012-09-01
Mission(s)
Other
Abstract
Bolometric luminosities and Eddington ratios of both X-ray selected broad-line (Type-1) and narrow-line (Type-2) active galactic nuclei (AGN) from the XMM-Newton survey in the Cosmic Evolution Survey field are presented. The sample is composed of 929 AGN (382 Type-1 AGN and 547 Type-2 AGN) and it covers a wide range of redshifts, X-ray luminosities and absorbing column densities. About 65 per cent of the sources are spectroscopically identified as either Type-1 or Type-2 AGN (83 and 52 per cent, respectively), while accurate photometric redshifts are available for the rest of the sample. The study of such a large sample of X-ray selected AGN with a high-quality multiwavelength coverage from the far-infrared (now with the inclusion of Herschel data at 100 and 160 mum) to the optical-ultraviolet allows us to obtain accurate estimates of bolometric luminosities, bolometric corrections and Eddington ratios. The k<SUB>bol</SUB> - L<SUB>bol</SUB> relations derived in this work are calibrated for the first time against a sizable AGN sample, and rely on observed redshifts, X-ray luminosities and column density distributions. We find that k<SUB>bol</SUB> is significantly lower at high L<SUB>bol</SUB> with respect to previous estimates by Marconi et al. and Hopkins et al. Black hole (BH) masses and Eddington ratios are available for 170 Type-1 AGN, while BH masses for Type-2 AGN are computed for 481 objects using the BH mass-stellar mass relation and the morphological information. We confirm a trend between k<SUB>bol</SUB> and lambda<SUB>Edd</SUB>, with lower hard X-ray bolometric corrections at lower Eddington ratios for both Type-1 and Type-2 AGN. We find that, on average, the Eddington ratio increases with redshift for all types of AGN at any given M<SUB>BH</SUB>, while no clear evolution with redshift is seen at any given L<SUB>bol</SUB>.