The NuSTAR Extragalactic Surveys: Overview and catalog from the COSMOS field

Abstract

To provide the census of the sources contributing to the X-ray background peak above 10 keV, Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is performing extragalactic surveys using a three-tier “wedding cake” approach. We present the NuSTAR survey of the COSMOS field, the medium sensitivity, and medium area tier, covering 1.7 deg^2 and overlapping with both Chandra and XMM-Newton data. This survey consists of 121 observations for a total exposure of ∼3 Ms. To fully exploit these data, we developed a new detection strategy, carefully tested through extensive simulations. The survey sensitivity at 20% completeness is 5.9, 2.9, and 6.4 × 10^(−14) erg cm^(-2) s^(-1) in the 3–24, 3–8, and 8–24 keV bands, respectively. By combining detections in 3 bands, we have a sample of 91 NuSTAR sources with 1042–1045.5 erg s^(-1) luminosities and redshift z = 0.04–2.5. Thirty-two sources are detected in the 8–24 keV band with fluxes ∼100 times fainter than sources detected by Swift-BAT. Of the 91 detections, all but 4 are associated with a Chandra and/or XMM-Newton point-like counterpart. One source is associated with an extended lower energy X-ray source. We present the X-ray (hardness ratio and luminosity) and optical-to-X-ray properties. The observed fraction of candidate Compton-thick active galactic nuclei measured from the hardness ratio is between 13%–20%. We discuss the spectral properties of NuSTAR J100259+0220.6 (ID 330) at z = 0.044, with the highest hardness ratio in the entire sample. The measured column density exceeds 1024 cm^(−2), implying the source is Compton-thick. This source was not previously recognized as such without the >10 keV data.