[38.01] Absorbed AGN Detected by the First Swift/BAT Hard X-ray Survey

AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 38 The X-ray and Infrared Backgrounds, AGN Evolution
Oral, Monday, 10:00-11:30am, January 9, 2006, Delaware A

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[38.01] Absorbed AGN Detected by the First Swift/BAT Hard X-ray Survey

C. B. Markwardt (NASA/GSFC & U. Md.), L. Barbier, S. Barthelmy (NASA/GSFC), D. Burrows (PSU), J. Cummings (NASA/GSFC & NRC), A. Falcone (PSU), E. Fenimore (LANL), N. Gehrels (NASA/GSFC), D. Hullinger (NASA/GSFC & U. Md.), J. Kennea (PSU), H. Krimm (NASA/GSFC & USRA), R. Mushotzky (NASA/GSFC), D. Palmer (LANL), A. Parsons (NASA/GSFC), T. Sakamoto (NASA/GSFC & NRC), R. Sambruna (NASA/GSFC), G. Sato (ISAS), G. Skinner (CNRS), J. Tueller (NASA/GSFC)

We present results from the the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) high galactic latitude survey in the 14--200 keV band. The survey reaches a flux of ~10^-11 erg cm^-2 s^-1 and has ~2.7^\prime (90% confidence) positional uncertainties for the faintest sources. This represents the most sensitive survey to date (by a factor of ~10) in this energy band.

Based on the first 3 months of observations, we have identified 86% of the 66 high-latitude sources. 12 are galactic type sources and 44 can be identified with previously known AGN. All but 5 of the AGN have archival X-ray spectra, enabling the estimation of line of sight column densities and other spectral properties. The median redshift (excluding radio-loud objects) is 0.012. We find that the column density distribution of these AGN is bimodal with 64% of the non-blazar sources having column densities N_H \geq 10²² cm^-2. None of the sources with \log L_X>43.5 show high column densities and very few of the lower L_X sources have low column densities. We will present results based on improved analysis and larger exposure times.

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