A NEW EXTENSIVE CATALOG OF OPTICALLY VARIABLE ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI IN THE GOODS FIELDS AND A NEW STATISTICAL APPROACH TO VARIABILITY SELECTION

Variability is a property shared by practically all active galactic nuclei (AGNs). This makes variability selection a possible technique for identifying AGNs. Given that variability selection makes no prior assumption about spectral properties, it is a powerful technique for detecting both low-luminosity AGNs in which the host galaxy emission is dominating and AGNs with unusual spectral properties. In this paper, we will discuss and test different statistical methods for the detection of variability in sparsely sampled data that allow full control over the false positive rates. We will apply these methods to the GOODS North and South fields and present a catalog of variable sources in the z band in both GOODS fields. Out of the 11,931 objects checked, we find 155 variable sources at a significance level of 99.9%, corresponding to about 1.3% of all objects. After rejection of stars and supernovae, 139 variability-selected AGNs remain. Their magnitudes reach down as faint as 25.5 mag in z. Spectroscopic redshifts are available for 22 of the variability-selected AGNs, ranging from 0.046 to 3.7. The absolute magnitudes in the rest-frame z band range from similar to-18 to -24, reaching substantially fainter than the typical luminosities probed by traditional X-ray and spectroscopic AGN selection in these fields. Therefore, this is a powerful technique for future exploration of the evolution of the faint end of the AGN luminosity function up to high redshifts.