XMM-Newton surveys of the Canada-France Redshift Survey fields - II. The X-ray catalogues, the properties of the host galaxies and the redshift distribution

We present the X-ray source catalogues for the XMM surveys of the 3-h and 14-h Canada-France Redshift Survey fields (0.5-10 keV flux range ∼2 × 10^-15-10^-13 erg cm^-2 s^-1). We use a subset of the XMM sources, which have Chandra positions, to determine the best method of obtaining optical identifications of sources with only XMM positions. We find optical identifications for 79 per cent of the XMM sources for which there are deep optical images. The sources without optical identifications are likely to be optically fainter and have higher redshifts than the sources with identifications. We have estimated 'photometric redshifts' for the identified sources, calibrating our method using ∼200 galaxies in the fields with spectroscopic redshifts. We find that the redshift distribution has a strong peak at z ∼ 0.7. The host galaxies of active galactic nuclei (AGN) identified in this work cover a wide range of optical properties, with every galaxy type being represented and no obvious preference for one type over another. Redder types tend to be more luminous than blue types, particularly at lower redshifts. The host galaxies also span a wide range of optical luminosity, in contrast to the narrow range found for the starburst galaxies detected in μJy radio surveys. We find a strong correlation between optical and X-ray luminosity similar to the Magorrian relation, although selection effects cannot be ruled out.