Zappacosta, L. and Harrison, F. A. (2018) The NuSTAR Extragalactic Surveys: X-Ray Spectroscopic Analysis of the Bright Hard-band Selected Sample. Astrophysical Journal, 854 (1). Art. No. 33. ISSN 1538-4357. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aaa550. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20180208-112709097
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Abstract
We discuss the spectral analysis of a sample of 63 active galactic nuclei (AGN) detected above a limiting flux of S(8-24 keV) = 7 x 10^(-14) erg s^(-1) cm^(-2 in the multi-tiered NuSTAR extragalactic survey program. The sources span a redshift range z = 0-2.1 (median (z) = 0.58). The spectral analysis is performed over the broad 0.5–24 keV energy range, combining NuSTAR with Chandra and/or XMM-Newton data and employing empirical and physically motivated models. This constitutes the largest sample of AGN selected at 〉 10 keV to be homogeneously spectrally analyzed at these flux levels. We study the distribution of spectral parameters such as photon index, column density (N_H), reflection parameter (R), and 10–40 keV luminosity (L_X). Heavily obscured (log[N_H/cm^(-2] ≥ 23) and Compton-thick (CT; log[N_H/cm^(-2)] ≥ 24) AGN constitute ~25% (15–17 sources) and ~2–3% (1–2 sources) of the sample, respectively. The observed N_H distribution agrees fairly well with predictions of cosmic X-ray background population-synthesis models (CXBPSM). We estimate the intrinsic fraction of AGN as a function of N_H, accounting for the bias against obscured AGN in a flux-selected sample. The fraction of CT AGN relative to log[N_H/cm^(-2] = 20-24 AGN is poorly constrained, formally in the range 2–56% (90% upper limit of 66%). We derived a fraction (f_(abs)) of obscured AGN (log[N_H/cm^(-2]= 22-24) as a function of L_X in agreement with CXBPSM and previous z 〈 1 X-ray determinations. Furthermore, f_(abs) at z = 0.1-0.5 and log(L_x/erg s^(-1) ≈ 43.6-44.3 agrees with observational measurements/trends obtained over larger redshift intervals. We report a significant anti-correlation of R with L_X (confirmed by our companion paper on stacked spectra) with considerable scatter around the median R values.
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Additional Information: | © 2018 American Astronomical Society. Received 2017 May 24. Accepted 2017 December 29. Published 2018 February 8. We thank the anonymous referee for useful comments that helped improve our analysis and the presentation of our results. We thank Johannes Buchner and Yoshihiro Ueda for providing machine-readable results on the absorbed fractions. L.Z. thanks R. Gilli, F. Nicastro, E. Piconcelli, R. Valiante, F. Vito, and D. Burlon for useful discussions. L.Z., A.C., F.F., G.L., and A.M. acknowledge financial support under ASI/INAF contract I/037/12/0. A.C. acknowledges the Caltech Kingsley fellowship program. G.L. acknowledges financial support from the CIG grant eEASY No. 321913. F.E.B. acknowledges support from CONICYT-Chile (Basal-CATA PFB-06/2007, FONDECYT Regular 1141218), the Ministry of Economy, Development, and Tourism's Millennium Science Initiative through grant IC120009, awarded to The Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, MAS. This work was supported under NASA Contract NNG08FD60C, and made use of data from the NuSTAR mission, a project led by the California Institute of Technology, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and funded by NASA. We thank the NuSTAR Operations, Software, and Calibration teams for support with the execution and analysis of these observations. This research has made use of the NuSTAR Data Analysis Software (NuSTARDAS) jointly developed by the ASI Science Data Center (ASDC, Italy) and the California Institute of Technology (USA). | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Group: | Space Radiation Laboratory, NuSTAR, Astronomy Department | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Subject Keywords: | galaxies: active; surveys; X-rays: galaxies | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Issue or Number: | 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
DOI: | 10.3847/1538-4357/aaa550 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Record Number: | CaltechAUTHORS:20180208-112709097 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Persistent URL: | https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20180208-112709097 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Official Citation: | L. Zappacosta et al 2018 ApJ 854 33 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Usage Policy: | No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
ID Code: | 84740 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Collection: | CaltechAUTHORS | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Deposited By: | Ruth Sustaita | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Deposited On: | 08 Feb 2018 23:34 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Last Modified: | 15 Nov 2021 20:22 |
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