Four of the ARCHES WPs aim at validating products, investigating their usability in the framework of various science cases and providing feedback on the methodology applied to generate them.

WP8 - Testing and validation

WP9 – AGN science case

WP10 – Galactic science case

WP11 – Cluster science case

• Testing and validation (WP8)

The particular aim of this WP is to carry out a set of tests on the products in order to validate them both technically and scientifically.

Planned activity:

The ARCHES cross-matching procedure and the cross-matched catalogues should be evaluated and tested to ensure that they meet the standards required for the project. Testing will involve technical and scientific validation of the quality and accuracy of the identifications and of their probabilities. Assessments of the completeness and reliability actually reached, search for cross-match artefacts and confusion issues will also be carried out. Similar testing and validation will be performed on the SEDs.

This WP is under the responsibility of the University of Leicester, however all partners will continue contributing in carrying out the diverse tasks including: defining the project quality standards, developing test and validation plan, executing test and validation program on cross-correlated catalogues and SEDs, documenting test/validation results.

As part of the output for this WP :

-A reference document has been created describing quality standards, plan for developing tests and validation including strategies for assessing product quality at the consortium level.

- A report will be written assessing the overall scientific quality of ARCHES products and presenting detailed results from the various tests defined in the test and validation plan.

• AGN science case (WP9)

The objective of this WP is to provide some concrete examples showing how the ARCHES SEDs could extend our knowledge on the nature of AGNs and on their feedback on galaxy formation andevolution.

Planned activity:

A detailed examination of the SEDs will be performed to understand the balance between spectral range coverage, data quality and number of objects. Relevant examples will then be selected to carry out the exploratory work that best highlight the results of the cross-correlation and SED-building.

The University of Leicester and the University of Cantabria are both equally responsible for this WP. The outcome will include:

- Interim reports giving a first view on the scientific value of the investigations

- A synthetic report on the use of the products in the framework of this science case. The report will include at least one scientific paper describing the subset of AGNs SEDs, along with the results of our photometric redshift determination. It will also include written contributions in scientific conferences presenting the results of our exploratory work on AGN and at least one scientific paper for each of the examples selected for exploratory work.

• Galactic science case (WP10)

This WP will investigate the use of the spectral energy distributions created by ARCHES to address two interesting astrophysical issues concerning populations of low to medium luminosity Galactic X-ray sources.

Planned activity:

Studying the population of low-to-medium luminosity hard X-ray source has a high value for constraining theories of the evolution of X-ray binaries. This particular exploratory study will be carried out at the University of Strasbourg and will draw on the work already done in Strasbourg in the framework of the SSC Galactic Plane Survey. Another path of investigation, to be mostly carried out at the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA) will focus on the search for circumstellar debris discs around young late type stars. We will test the use of SEDs for Galactic studies on these two science cases.

This WP will be led by the University of Strasbourg and INTA will contribute to the outcome:

- Interim reports giving a first view on the scientific value of the investigations and which may include some conference publications

-A synthetic report on the use of the products in the framework of the Galactic science case. The report will include at least one scientific paper describing the subset of SEDs used and will also include written contributions in scientific conferences.

• Cluster science case (WP11)

This WP will study the overall properties of the catalogue of galaxy clusters created in WP5 and in WP6 by the integrated cluster finder.

Planned activity:

WP11 aims at providing proper descriptions of the methodology and of the main results in scientific journals as well as an assessment of the completeness of the cluster catalogue. Follow-up studies of interesting new discoveries will be initiated. A comparative study between the ARCHES cluster catalogue and the SZ-based catalogues from the South Pole Telescope and from the Planck satellite shall be performed on the common sky areas to quantify the strength and possible shortcomings of both methods.

The Astrophysik Institut Potsdam is entirely responsible for this WP and its outcome:

- Interim reports giving a first view on the scientific value of the investigations and which may include some conference publications

-A synthetic report on the use of the Integrated Cluster Finder and on its astrophysical results. The report will include at least one scientific paper explaining the properties of the ICF and of the cluster catalogue as well as written contributions in scientific conferences.