1995A&A...296....1C

We report the results of a detailed analysis of the contribution of various classes of AGNs (Seyfert galaxies and quasars) to the extragalactic X-ray background (XRB). The model is based on the unification schemes of AGNs, on their related X-ray spectral properties in the light of recent observational results and on the X-ray luminosity function derived by Boyle et al. (1993MNRAS.260...49B). The integrated emission from AGNs, when folded with an appropriate cosmological evolution law, can provide a good fit to the XRB over a wide energy range, from several to ∼100keV, while it contributes only about 74% of the ROSAT soft XRB. The baseline model predictions have been checked against all available observational constraints from both hard and soft X-ray surveys (counts, redshift distributions and average X-ray source spectral properties).