Uncovering Local Absorbed Active Galactic Nuclei with Swift and Suzaku

Detection of absorbed active galactic nuclei and their properties remains an elusive and important problem in understanding the evolution and activation of black holes. With the very hard X-ray survey conducted by Swift's Burst Alert Telescope - the first all-sky survey in 30 years - we are beginning to uncover the characteristics of obscured AGN. The synergy between Suzaku and Swift has been crucial in pinning down the X-ray properties of newly detected heavily obscured but bright hard X-ray sources. We review the X-ray and optical spectroscopic properties of obscured AGN in the local Universe, as detected in the Swift survey. We discuss the relative distribution of absorbed/unabsorbed sources, including "hidden" and Compton thick AGN populations. Among the results from the survey, we find that absorbed AGN are less luminous than unabsorbed sources. Optical spectra reveal that sources with emission line ratios indicative of LINERs/H II galaxies/composites are the least luminous objects in the sample, while optical absorbed and unabsorbed Seyferts have the same luminosity distributions. Thus, the least luminous sources are likely accreting in a different mode than the Seyferts.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, To appear in the conference proceedings for "Exploring the X-ray Universe: Suzaku and Beyond", the July 2011 Suzaku Science Conferenc

The Complex X-ray Spectrum of the Sefyert 1.5 Source NGC 6860

The X-ray spectrum of the Seyfert 1.5 source NGC 6860 is among the most complex of the sources detected in the Swift Burst Alert Telescope all-sky survey. A short XMM-Newton follow-up observation of the source revealed a flat spectrum both above and below 2 keV. To uncover the complexity of the source, in this paper we analyze both a 40 ks Suzaku and a 100 ks XMM-Newton observation of NGC 6860. While the spectral state of the source changed between the newer observations presented here and the earlier short XMM-Newton spectrum - showing a higher flux and steeper power law component - the spectrum of NGC 6860 is still complex with clearly detected warm absorption signatures. We find that a two component warm ionized absorber is present in the soft spectrum, with column densities of about 10^20 and 10^21 cm$^-2, ionization parameters of xi = 180 and 45 ergs cm s^-1, and outflow velocities for each component in the range of 0-300 km s^-1. Additionally, in the hard spectrum we find a broad (approx 11000 km s^-1) Fe K-alpha emission line, redshifted by approx 2800 km s^-1.Comment: 35 pages, 9 figures, Accepted to Ap

The Swift BAT Survey Detects Two Optical Broad Line, X-ray Heavily Obscured Active Galaxies: NVSS 193013+341047 and IRAS 05218-1212

The Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) is discovering interesting new objects while monitoring the sky in the 14-195 keV band. Here we present the X-ray properties and spectral energy distributions for two unusual AGN sources. Both NVSS 193013+341047 and IRAS 05218-1212 are absorbed, Compton-thin, but heavily obscured (NH \sim 10^23 cm-2), X-ray sources at redshifts < 0.1. The spectral energy distributions reveal these galaxies to be very red, with high extinction in the optical and UV. A similar SED is seen for the extremely red objects (EROs) detected in the higher redshift universe. This suggests that these unusual BAT-detected sources are a low- redshift (z << 1) analog to EROs, which recent evidence suggests are a class of the elusive type II quasars. Studying the multi-wavelength properties of these sources may reveal the properties of their high redshift counterparts.Comment: 20 pages, accepted to Ap

Optical Spectral Properties of Swift BAT Hard X-ray Selected Active Galactic Nuclei Sources

The Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) survey of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) is providing an unprecedented view of local AGNs ( = 0.03) and their host galaxy properties. In this paper, we present an analysis of the optical spectra of a sample of 64 AGNs from the 9-month survey, detected solely based on their 14-195 keV flux. Our analysis includes both archived spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and our own observations from the 2.1-m Kitt Peak National Observatory telescope. Among our results, we include line ratio classifications utilizing standard emission line diagnostic plots, [O III] 5007 A luminosities, and H-beta derived black hole masses. As in our X-ray study, we find the type 2 sources to be less luminous (in [O III] 5007 A and 14-195 keV luminosities) with lower accretion rates than the type 1 sources. We find that the optically classified LINERs, H II/composite galaxies, and ambiguous sources have the lowest luminosities, while both broad line and narrow line Seyferts have similar luminosities. From a comparison of the hard X-ray (14-195 keV) and [O III] luminosities, we find that both the observed and extinction-corrected [O III] luminosities are weakly correlated with X-ray luminosity. In a study of the host galaxy properties from both continuum fits and measurements of the stellar absorption indices, we find that the hosts of the narrow line sources have properties consistent with late type galaxies.Comment: 84 pages, 20 figures, 17 tables, accepted in Ap