The spatial clustering of X-ray selected AGN and galaxies in the Chandra Deep Field South and North

¹ Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Largo E. Fermi 5, 50125 Firenze, Italy e-mail: gilli@arcetri.astro.it
² European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, Garching, 85748, Germany
³ Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) – Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, via Ranzani 1, 40127 Bologna, Italy
⁴ Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) – Osservatorio Astronomico, via G. Tiepolo 11, 34131 Trieste, Italy
⁵ INFN, c/o Dip. di Astronomia dell'Università, via G. Tiepolo 11, 34131 Trieste, Italy
⁶ Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, 98bis boulevard Arago, 75014 Paris, France
⁷ The Johns Hopkins University, Homewood Campus, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
⁸ Associated Universities, Inc., 1400 16th Street NW, Suite 730, Washington, DC 20036, USA
⁹ Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Postfach 1312, 85741 Garching, Germany
¹⁰ Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA

Received: 31 May 2004
Accepted: 22 September 2004

Abstract

We investigate the spatial clustering of X-ray selected sources in the two deepest X-ray fields to date, namely the 2 Ms Chandra Deep Field North (CDFN) and the 1 Ms Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS). The projected correlation function , measured on scales  Mpc for a sample of 240 sources with spectroscopic redshift in the CDFN and 124 sources in the CDFS at a median redshift of is used to constrain the amplitude and slope of the real space correlation function . The clustering signal is detected at high confidence () in both fields. The amplitude of the correlation is found to be significantly different in the two fields, the correlation length r₀ being  Mpc in the CDFS and  Mpc in the CDFN, while the correlation slope γ is found to be flat in both fields: in the CDFS and in the CDFN (a flat Universe with and is assumed; Poisson error estimates are considered). The correlation function also has been measured separately for sources classified as AGN or galaxies. In both fields AGN have a median redshift of and a median 0.5-10 keV luminosity of erg s^-1, i.e. they are generally in the Seyfert luminosity regime.
 As in the case of the total samples, we found a significant difference in the AGN clustering amplitude between the two fields, the best fit correlation parameters being  Mpc, in the CDFS, and  Mpc, in the CDFN. In the CDFN, where the statistics are sufficiently high, we were also able to measure the clustering of X-ray selected galaxies, finding  Mpc and .
Within each field no statistically significant difference is found between soft and hard X-ray selected sources or between type 1 and type 2 AGN. After having discussed and ruled out the possibility that the observed variance in the clustering amplitude is due to observational biases, we verified that the extra correlation signal in the CDFS is primarily due to the two prominent redshift spikes at reported by Gilli et al. ([CITE]).
 The high ( Mpc) correlation length measured for the X-ray selected AGN at in the two Chandra Ms fields is comparable to that of early type galaxies at the same redshift. This is consistent with the idea that, at , AGN with Seyfert-like luminosities might be generally hosted by massive galaxies.