The Chandra Deep Field North survey. XIII. 2 Ms point-source catalogs

We present point-source catalogs for the approximate to2 Ms exposure of the Chandra Deep Field North, currently the deepest X-ray observation of the universe in the 0.5-8.0 keV band. Five hundred and three (503) X-ray sources are detected over an approximate to448 arcmin(2) area in up to seven X-ray bands. Twenty (20) of these X-ray sources lie in the central approximate to5.3 arcmin(2) Hubble Deep Field North (13,600(-3000)(+3800) sources deg(-2)). The on-axis sensitivity limits are approximate to2.5 x 10(-17) ergs cm(-2) s(-1) (0.5-2.0 keV) and approximate to1.4 x 10(-16) ergs cm(-2) s(-1) (2-8 keV). Source positions are determined using matched-filter and centroiding techniques; the median positional uncertainty is approximate to0."3. The X-ray colors of the detected sources indicate a broad variety of source types, although absorbed AGNs (including a small number of possible Compton-thick sources) are clearly the dominant type. We also match lower significance X-ray sources to optical counterparts and provide a list of 79 optically bright (R less than or similar to 23) lower significance Chandra sources. The majority of these sources appear to be starburst and normal galaxies. The average backgrounds in the 0.5-2.0 keV and 2 - 8 keV bands are 0.056 and 0.135 counts Ms-1 pixel(-1), respectively. The background count distributions are very similar to Poisson distributions. We show that this approximate to2 Ms exposure is approximately photon limited in all seven X-ray bands for regions close to the aim point, and we predict that exposures up to approximate to25 Ms (0.5-2.0 keV) and approximate to4 Ms (2-8 keV) should remain nearly photon limited. We demonstrate that this observation does not suffer from source confusion within approximate to6' of the aim point, and future observations are unlikely to be source-confusion limited within approximate to3' of the aim point even for source densities exceeding 100,000 deg(-2). These analyses directly show that Chandra can achieve significantly higher sensitivities in an efficient, nearly photon-limited manner and be largely free of source confusion. To allow consistent comparisons, we have also produced point-source catalogs for the approximate to1 Ms Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S). Three hundred and twenty-six (326) X-ray sources are included in the main Chandra catalog, and an additional 42 optically bright X-ray sources are included in a lower significance Chandra catalog. We find good agreement with the photometry of the previously published CDF-S catalogs; however, we provide significantly improved positional accuracy.