2014ApJ...785...17L -
Astrophys. J., 785, 17 (2014/April-2)
NuSTAR observations of heavily obscured quasars at z ∼ 0.5.
LANSBURY G.B., ALEXANDER D.M., DEL MORO A., GANDHI P., ASSEF R.J., STERN D., AIRD J., BALLANTYNE D.R., BALOKOVIC M., BAUER F.E., BOGGS S.E., BRANDT W.N., CHRISTENSEN F.E., CRAIG W.W., ELVIS M., GREFENSTETTE B.W., HAILEY C.J., HARRISON F.A., HICKOX R.C., KOSS M., LAMASSA S.M., LUO B., MULLANEY J.R., TENG S.H., URRY C.M. and ZHANG W.W.
Abstract (from CDS):
We present NuSTAR hard X-ray observations of three Type 2 quasars at z ~ 0.4-0.5, optically selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Although the quasars show evidence for being heavily obscured, Compton-thick systems on the basis of the 2-10 keV to [O III] luminosity ratio and multiwavelength diagnostics, their X-ray absorbing column densities (NH) are poorly known. In this analysis, (1) we study X-ray emission at >10 keV, where X-rays from the central black hole are relatively unabsorbed, in order to better constrain NH. (2) We further characterize the physical properties of the sources through broad-band near-UV to mid-IR spectral energy distribution analyses. One of the quasars is detected with NuSTAR at >8 keV with a no-source probability of <0.1%, and its X-ray band ratio suggests near Compton-thick absorption with NH ≳ 5x1023/cm2. The other two quasars are undetected, and have low X-ray to mid-IR luminosity ratios in both the low-energy (2-10 keV) and high-energy (10-40 keV) X-ray regimes that are consistent with extreme, Compton-thick absorption (NH ≳ 1024/cm2). We find that for quasars at z ∼ 0.5, NuSTAR provides a significant improvement compared to lower energy (<10 keV) Chandra and XMM-Newton observations alone, as higher column densities can now be directly constrained.
Abstract Copyright:
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Journal keyword(s):
galaxies: active - X-rays: galaxies
Simbad objects:
4
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