THE ROADMAP FOR UNIFICATION IN GALAXY GROUP SELECTION. I. A SEARCH FOR EXTENDED X-RAY EMISSION IN THE CNOC2 SURVEY**Based on observations with the ESA/NASA XMM-Newton science mission; the European Southern Observatory, Chile; NASA/ESA Chandra X-ray Observatory.

X-ray properties of galaxy groups can unlock some of the most challenging research topics in modern extragalactic astronomy: the growth of structure and its influence on galaxy formation. Only with the advent of the Chandra and XMM-Newton facilities have X-ray observations reached the depths required to address these questions in a satisfactory manner. Here we present an X-ray imaging study of two patches from the CNOC2 spectroscopic galaxy survey using combined Chandra and XMM-Newton data. A state of the art extended source finding algorithm has been applied, and the resultant source catalog, including redshifts from a spectroscopic follow-up program, is presented. The total number of spectroscopically identified groups is 25 spanning a redshift range 0.04–0.79. Approximately 50% of CNOC2 spectroscopically selected groups in the deeper X-ray (RA14h) field are likely X-ray detections, compared to 20% in the shallower (RA21h) field. Statistical modeling shows that this is consistent with expectations, assuming an expected evolution of the LX–M relation. A significant detection of a stacked shear signal for both spectroscopic and X-ray groups indicates that both samples contain real groups of about the expected mass. We conclude that the current area and depth of X-ray and spectroscopic facilities provide a unique window of opportunity at z ∼ 0.4 to test the X-ray appearance of galaxy groups selected in various ways. There is at present no evidence that the correlation between X-ray luminosity and velocity dispersion evolves significantly with redshift, which implies that catalogs based on either method can be fairly compared and modeled.