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Characterisation of AGN from the XMM-Newton Slew Survey

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posted on 2017-03-27, 11:42 authored by R. L. C. Starling, C. Wildy, K. Wiersema, S. Mateos, R. D. Saxton, A. M. Read, B. Mingo
We present optical spectroscopy of candidate active galactic nuclei (AGN) pinpointed by a Swift follow-up campaign on unidentified transients in the XMM–Newton Slew Survey, increasing the completeness of the identifications of AGN in the Survey. Our Swift follow-up campaign identified 17 X-ray Telescope-detected candidate AGN, of which 9 were selected for optical follow-up and a further two were confirmed as AGN elsewhere. Using data obtained at the William Herschel Telescope, Very Large Telescope and New Technology Telescope, we find AGN features in seven of the candidates. We classify six as Seyfert types 1.0–1.5, with broad-line region velocities spanning 2000–12000 km s−1, and identify one as a possible type II AGN, consistent with the lack of a soft band X-ray detection in the Slew Survey. The virial black hole mass estimates for the sample lie between 1× 108 and 3× 109 M⊙, with one source likely emitting close to its Eddington rate, LBol/LEdd ∼ 0.9. We find a wide redshift range 0.08 < z < 0.9 for the nine now confirmed AGN drawn from the unidentified Slew Survey sample. One source remaining unclassified shows outbursts rarely seen before in AGN. We conclude that AGN discovered in this way are consistent with the largely non-varying, Slew-selected, known AGN population. We also find parallels with XMM–Newton Bright Serendipitous Survey AGN selected from pointed observations, and postulate that shallow X-ray surveys select AGN drawn from the same populations that have been characterized in deeper X-ray-selected samples.

Funding

This paper is based on service observations made with the WHT operated on the island of La Palma by the Isaac Newton Group in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. We are grateful to the ING support astronomers O. Vaduvescu and L. Dominguez and WHT observer M. Cappellari for carrying out these service observations. The Swift BAT result was obtained with thanks to H. Krimm. Special thanks to Hannah Willett for contributions to the wider project during her Summer Undergraduate Research Experience with RLCS, funded by the University of Leicester. The authors wish to thank the anonymous referee for useful suggestions. RLCS was supported by a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship during the proposal and observation phases of this work; CW and KW acknowledge funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council. SM acknowledges financial support by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through grant AYA2016-76730-P, which is partly funded by the FEDER programme. BM acknowledges funding from the UK Space Agency. The WHT and its service programme are operated on the island of La Palma by the Isaac Newton Group in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and we acknowledge data taken under service observing programme Sw2011b12. This work is based on observations collected at the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern hemisphere, Chile, programme ID 088.A-0628. The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys (PS1) and the PS1 public science archive have been made possible through contributions by the Institute for Astronomy, the University of Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS Project Office, the Max-Planck Society and its participating institutes, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, The Johns Hopkins University, Durham University, the University of Edinburgh, the Quee

History

Citation

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2017, 468 (1), pp. 378-388.

Author affiliation

/Organisation/COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING/Department of Physics and Astronomy

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Published in

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP), Royal Astronomical Society

issn

0035-8711

eissn

1365-2966

Acceptance date

2017-02-20

Copyright date

2017

Available date

2017-03-27

Publisher version

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/mnras/stx455

Language

en

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