Active galactic nuclei and their large-scale structure: an eROSITA mock catalogue

• Published in: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 2019-08, Vol.487 (2), p.2005-2029
• Main Authors: Comparat, J, Merloni, A, Salvato, M, Nandra, K, Boller, T, Georgakakis, A, Finoguenov, A, Dwelly, T, Buchner, J, Del Moro, A, Clerc, N, Wang, Y, Zhao, G, Prada, F, Yepes, G, Brusa, M, Krumpe, M, Liu, T
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Astrophysics; Physics
• ISSN: 0035-8711; 1365-2966
• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stz1390

In the context of the upcoming SRG/eROSITA survey, we present an N-body simulation-based mock catalogue for X-ray-selected active galactic nucleus (AGN) samples. The model reproduces the observed hard X-ray AGN luminosity function (XLF) and the soft X-ray logN–logS from redshift 0 to 6. The XLF is reproduced to within |$\pm 5{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$| and the logN-logS to within |$\pm 20{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$|⁠. We develop a joint X-ray – optical extinction and classification model. We adopt a set of empirical spectral energy distributions to predict observed magnitudes in the UV, optical, and NIR. With the latest eROSITA all sky survey sensitivity model, we create a high-fidelity full-sky mock catalogue of X-ray AGN. It predicts their distributions in right ascension, declination, redshift, and fluxes. Using empirical medium resolution optical spectral templates and an exposure time calculator, we find that 1.1 × 10^6 (4 × 10^5) fibre-hours are needed to follow-up spectroscopically from the ground the detected X-ray AGN with an optical magnitude 21 < r < 22.8 (22.8 < r < 25) with a 4-m (8-m) class multiobject spectroscopic facility. We find that future clustering studies will measure the AGN bias to the per cent level at redshift z < 1.2 and should discriminate possible scenarios of galaxy-AGN co-evolution. We predict the accuracy to which the baryon acoustic oscillation standard ruler will be measured using X-ray AGN: better than 3 per cent for AGN between redshift 0.5 to 3 and better than 1 per cent using the Ly α forest of X-ray QSOs discovered between redshift 2 and 3. eROSITA will provide an outstanding set of targets for future galaxy evolution and cosmological studies.