  We present results from a Chandra X-ray Observatory study of the field X-ray
source populations in 4 different observations: two high-redshift (z~0.5)
clusters of galaxies 3C295 and RXJ003033.2+261819; and two non-cluster fields
with similar exposure time. Surprisingly, the 0.5-2 keV source surface
densities (~900-1200 sources deg**-2 at a flux limit of 1.5x10**-15 erg
cm**-2s**-1) measured in an ~8'x8' area surrounding each cluster exceed by a
factor of ~2 the value expected on the basis of the ROSAT and Chandra
logN-logS, with a significance of ~2 sigma each, or ~3.5 sigma when the 2
fields are combined (i.e. a probability to be a statistical fluctuation of <1%
and <0.04%, respectively). The same analysis performed on the non-cluster
fields and on the outer chips of the cluster fields does NOT show evidence of
such an excess. In both cluster fields, the summed 0.5-10 keV spectrum of the
detected objects is well fitted by a power-law with Gamma~1.7 similar to AGNs
and shows no sign of intrinsic absorption. The few (~10 out of 35) optical
identifications available to date confirm that most of them are, as expected,
AGNs but the number of redshifts available is too small to allow conclusions on
their nature. We discuss possible interpretations of the overdensity in terms
of: a statistical variation of Cosmic Background sources; a concentration of
AGNs and/or powerful starburst galaxies associated with the clusters; and g
ravitational lensing of background QSO's by the galaxy clusters. All
explanations are however difficult to reconcile with the large number of excess
sources detected. Deeper X-ray observations and more redshifts measurements are
clearly required to settle the issue.
