The XXL Survey

Abstract

We study the space density evolution of active galactic nuclei (AGN) using the 610 MHz radio survey of the XXL-North field, performed with the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. The survey covers an area of 30.4 deg2, with a beamsize of 6.5 arcsec. The survey is divided into two parts, one covering an area of 11.9 deg2 with 1σ rms noise of 200 μJy beam−1 and the other spanning 18.5 deg2 with rms noise of 45 μJy beam−1. We extracted the catalog of radio components above 7σ. The catalog was cross-matched with a multi-wavelength catalog of the XXL-North field (covering about 80% of the radio XXL-North field) using a likelihood ratio method, which determines the counterparts based on their positions and their optical properties. The multi-component sources were matched visually with the aid of a computer code: Multi-Catalog Visual Cross-Matching. A flux density cut above 1 mJy selects AGN hosts with a high purity in terms of star formation contamination based on the available source counts. After cross-matching and elimination of observational biases arising from survey incompletenesses, the number of remaining sources was 1150. We constructed the rest-frame 1.4 GHz radio luminosity functions of these sources using the maximum volume method. This survey allows us to probe luminosities of 23 ≲ log(L1.4 GHz[W Hz−1]) ≲ 28 up to redshifts of z ≈ 2.1. Our results are consistent with the results from the literature in which AGN are comprised of two differently evolving populations, where the high luminosity end of the luminosity functions evolves more strongly than the low-luminosity end.