Hard X-ray observations of Extremely Red Objects

Abstract

Extremely Red Objects (EROs, R-K>5) constitute a heterogeneous class of extragalactic sources including high redshift elliptical galaxies, dusty star-forming systems and heavily obscured AGNs. Hard X-ray observations provide an unique and powerful tool to uncover obscured nuclear or star-forming activity. We present the results of XMM-Newton observations of the largest sample of EROs available to date (about 450 objects over a contiguous area of 700 arcmin²). Five of the 46 hard X-ray selected sources brighter than 3x 10^-15 cgs in the 2-10 keV band, are associated with EROs. All of the X-ray detected EROs show rather extreme X-ray-to-optical flux ratios, suggesting the presence of highly obscured AGN activity. We also report on the X-ray stacking analysis of spectroscopically identified EROs in the Chandra Deep Field South.