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eROSITA (extended ROentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array) is the core instrument on the Russian Spektrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) mission which is scheduled for launch in 2013. eROSITA will perform an all-sky survey lasting four years, followed by a phase of three years for pointed observations. eROSITA consists of seven identical Mirror Modules, each equipped with 54 Wolter-I shells with an outer diameter of 360 mm. This would provide an effective area of ~1500 cm2at 1.5 keV and an on axis PSF HEW of 15 arcsec resulting in an effective angular resolution of 28 arcsec averaged over the field of view. In the focus of each mirror module, a fast frame-store pn-CCD provides a field of view of 1°in diameter. In this paper we report on the instrument development and its status only.

We present infrared, optical, and X-ray data of 48 X-ray bright, optically dull active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in the COSMOS field. These objects exhibit the X-ray luminosity of an AGN but lack broad and narrow emission lines in their optical spectrum. We show that despite the lack of optical emission lines, most of these optically dull AGNs are not well described by a typical passive red galaxy spectrum: instead they exhibit weak but significant blue emission like an unobscured AGN. Photometric observations over several years additionally show significant variability in the blue emission of four optically dull AGNs. The nature of the blue and infrared emission suggest that the optically inactive appearance of these AGNs cannot be caused by obscuration intrinsic to the AGNs. Instead, up to [?]70% of optically dull AGNs are diluted by their hosts, with bright or simply edge-on hosts lying preferentially within the spectroscopic aperture. The remaining [?]30% of optically dull AGNs have anomalously high fX /fO ratios and are intrinsically weak, not obscured, in the optical. These optically dull AGNs are best described as a weakly accreting AGN with a truncated accretion disk from a radiatively inefficient accretion flow.

We present black hole masses and accretion rates for 182 Type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in COSMOS. We estimate masses using the scaling relations for the broad H b, Mg II, and C IV emission lines in the redshift ranges 0.16 < z < 0.88, 1 < z < 2.4, and 2.7 < z < 4.9. We estimate the accretion rate using an Eddington ratio LI /L Edd estimated from optical and X-ray data. We find that very few Type 1 AGNs accrete below LI /L Edd [?] 0.01, despite simulations of synthetic spectra which show that the survey is sensitive to such Type 1 AGNs. At lower accretion rates the broad-line region may become obscured, diluted, or nonexistent. We find evidence that Type 1 AGNs at higher accretion rates have higher optical luminosities, as more of their emission comes from the cool (optical) accretion disk with respect to shorter wavelengths. We measure a larger range in accretion rate than previous works, suggesting that COSMOS is more efficient at finding low accretion rate Type 1 AGNs. However, the measured range in accretion rate is still comparable to the intrinsic scatter from the scaling relations, suggesting that Type 1 AGNs accrete at a narrow range of Eddington ratio, with LI /L Edd [?] 0.1.

We present optical spectroscopy for an X-ray and optical flux-limited sample of 677 XMM-Newton selected targets covering the 2 deg2 Cosmic Evolution Survey field, with a yield of 485 high-confidence redshifts. The majority of the spectra were obtained over three seasons (2005-2007) with the Inamori Magellan Areal Camera and Spectrograph instrument on the Magellan (Baade) telescope. We also include in the sample previously published Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectra and supplemental observations with MMT/Hectospec. We detail the observations and classification analyses. The survey is 90% complete to flux limits of f 0.5-10 keV > 8 x 10-16 erg cm-2 s-1 and i + AB < 22, where over 90% of targets have high-confidence redshifts. Making simple corrections for incompleteness due to redshift and spectral type allows for a description of the complete population to i + AB < 23. The corrected sample includes a 57% broad emission line (Type 1, unobscured) active galactic nucleus (AGN) at 0.13 < z < 4.26, 25% narrow emission line (Type 2, obscured) AGN at 0.07 < z < 1.29, and 18% absorption line (host-dominated, obscured) AGN at 0 < z < 1.22 (excluding the stars that made up 4% of the X-ray targets). We show that the survey's limits in X-ray and optical fluxes include nearly all X-ray AGNs (defined by L 0.5-10 keV > 3 x 1042 erg s-1) to z < 1, of both optically obscured and unobscured types. We find statistically significant evidence that the obscured-to-unobscured AGN ratio at z < 1 increases with redshift and decreases with luminosity.

What is the relevance of major mergers and interactions as triggering mechanisms for active galactic nuclei (AGNs) activity? To answer this long-standing question, we analyze 140 XMM-Newton-selected AGN host galaxies and a matched control sample of 1264 inactive galaxies over z [?] 0.3-1.0 and M * < 1011.7 M with high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope/Advanced Camera for Surveys imaging from the COSMOS field. The visual analysis of their morphologies by 10 independent human classifiers yields a measure of the fraction of distorted morphologies in the AGN and control samples, i.e., quantifying the signature of recent mergers which might potentially be responsible for fueling/triggering the AGN. We find that (1) the vast majority (>85%) of the AGN host galaxies do not show strong distortions and (2) there is no significant difference in the distortion fractions between active and inactive galaxies. Our findings provide the best direct evidence that, since z [?] 1, the bulk of black hole (BH) accretion has not been triggered by major galaxy mergers, therefore arguing that the alternative mechanisms, i.e., internal secular processes and minor interactions, are the leading triggers for the episodes of major BH growth. We also exclude an alternative interpretation of our results: a substantial time lag between merging and the observability of the AGN phase could wash out the most significant merging signatures, explaining the lack of enhancement of strong distortions on the AGN hosts. We show that this alternative scenario is unlikely due to (1) recent major mergers being ruled out for the majority of sources due to the high fraction of disk-hosted AGNs, (2) the lack of a significant X-ray signal in merging inactive galaxies as a signature of a potential buried AGN, and (3) the low levels of soft X-ray obscuration for AGNs hosted by interacting galaxies, in contrast to model predictions.