Comoving Space Density and Obscured Fraction of High-Redshift Active Galactic Nuclei in the Subaru/{\it XMM-Newton} Deep Survey. (arXiv:1208.5050v1 [astro-ph.CO])

Comoving Space Density and Obscured Fraction of High-Redshift Active Galactic Nuclei in the Subaru/{\it XMM-Newton} Deep Survey. (arXiv:1208.5050v1 [astro-ph.CO]):
We study the comoving space density of X-ray-selected luminous active
galactic nuclei (AGNs) and the obscured AGN fraction at high redshifts ($3 < z
< 5$) in the Subaru/{\it XMM-Newton} Deep Survey (SXDS) field. From an X-ray
source catalog with high completeness of optical identification thanks to deep
optical images, we select a sample of 30 AGNs at $z > 3$ with intrinsic
(de-absorbed and rest-frame 2--10 keV) luminosities of $L_{\rm X} = 10^{44-45}$
erg s$^{-1}$ detected in the 0.5--2 keV band, consisting of 20 and 10 objects
with spectroscopic and photometric redshifts, respectively. Utilizing the
$1/V_{\rm max}$ method, we confirm that the comoving space density of luminous
AGNs decreases with redshift above $z > 3$. When combined with the {\it
Chandra}-COSMOS result of Civano et al.\ (2011), the density decline of AGNs
with $L_{\rm X} = 10^{44-45}$ erg s$^{-1}$ is well represented by a power law
of $(1 + z)^{-6.2 \pm 0.9}$. We also determine the fraction of X-ray obscured
AGNs with $N_{\rm H} > 10^{22}$ cm$^{-2}$ in the Compton-thin population to be
0.54$^{+0.17}_{-0.19}$, by carefully taking into account observational biases
including the effects of photon statistics for each source. This result is
consistent with an independent determination of the type-2 AGN fraction based
on optical properties, for which the fraction is found to be 0.59$\pm$0.09.
Comparing our result with that obtained in the local Universe, we conclude that
the obscured fraction of luminous AGNs increases significantly from $z=0$ to
$z>3$ by a factor of 2.5$\pm$1.1.