Abstract
Astrophys.J.702:270-276,2009 We present here the analysis of X-rays point sources detected in several
observations available in the XMM-Newton public archive. We focused, in
particular, on energies below 1 keV, which are of particular relevance to the
understanding of the Diffuse X-ray Background. The average field of all the
exposures is 0.09 deg^-2. We reached an average flux sensitivity of 5.8x10^-16
erg s^-1 cm^-2 in the soft band (0.5-2.0 keV) and 2.5x10^-16 erg s^-1 cm^-2 in
the very soft band (0.4-0.6 keV). In this paper we discuss the logN-logS
results, the contribution to the integrated X-ray sky flux, and the properties
of the cumulative spectrum from all sources. In particular, we found an excess
flux at around 0.5 keV in the composite spectrum of faint sources. The excess
seems to be a general property of all the fields observed suggesting an
additional class of weak sources is contributing to the X-ray emission at these
energies. Combining our results with previous investigations we have also
quantified the contribution of the individual components of the diffuse X-ray
Background in the 3/4 keV band.
