2002/02/06 by M. Pierre, I. Valtchanov, Pierre, M. +3
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0202117
7 pages, 6 figures (2 in colour). Proceedings of the Conference "New Visions of the X-ray Universe in the XMM-Newton and Chandra Era" 26-30 November 2001, ESTEC, NL
arxiv created 2002/04/19 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
Thanks to its unrivalled sensitivity and large field of view, XMM potentially occupies a leading position as a survey instrument. We present cosmological arguments in favour of a medium-sensitivity, large-scale structure survey with XMM, using galaxy clusters as tracers of the cosmic network. We show how this has motivated the definition of a concrete survey, the XMM Large-Scale Structure Survey (XMM-LSS), which will cover 64 square degrees with a sensitivity about 1000 times better than that of the ROSAT All-Sky Survey. We present our predictions for cluster counts based on the Press-Schechter formalism and detailed X-ray image simulations, and show how they agree with the cluster statistics from recent ROSAT cluster surveys. We also present the extensive multi-wavelength follow-up associated with XMM-LSS, as well as the first observations from the programme.