Speaker
Description
Likelihood function-based methods are a theoretically optimal way of detecting sources. They maximize the use of all available information about the telescope and expected spectral information about the source.
In this talk, we describe how this new method was set up and applied to the Chandra's Deep Field South, a unique X-ray dataset with its record 7 Ms exposure and sub-arcsec spatial resolution of the telescope. Our preliminary results show that the gain in detection sensitivity is approximately equivalent to doubling the existing exposure. The increase in number of detected sources is partially due to the largely increased number of detected obscured Active galactic nuclei, that begin to appear at the detection threshold of our method. Thus, with this approach we begin to probe the little-studied population of objects, that make a major contribution to the Cosmic X-ray background emission above 10 keV.