Toward an unbiased sample of X‐ray selected normal galaxies outside the local Universe

This paper shows that our understanding of the statistical properties of X‐ray selected normal galaxies (e.g. X‐ray luminosity function) can be significantly improved by combining a wide‐area XMM‐Newton survey with the moderare resolution and high S/N optical spectroscopy of the SDSS. Such a combined dataset has the potential to minimise uncertainties that affect existing normal galaxy samples at X‐rays, such as small number statistics, cosmic variance, AGN contamination and incompleteness at bright X‐ray luminosities. It is demonstrated that a 100 deg² XMM‐Newton survey in the SDSS area to the limit f_X(0.5–2 keV) ≈ 5 × 10^–15 erg cm^–2 s^–1 will detect over 400 X‐ray selected normal galaxies with excellent control over systematic biases, thereby providing tight contraints on the X‐ray luminosity function at z ≈ 0.1. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)