Swift-XRT follow-up analysis of unidentified hard X-ray sources
Abstract
It is currently established that the sources contributing to the cosmic X-ray background (CXB) emission are mainly nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN), in particular those that are obscured. Thus, it is important to fully identify the hard X-ray sky source population to accurately characterize the individual contribution of different AGNs to the overall CXB emission. We present a follow-up analysis of all the 218 sources marked as unidentified in our previous revision of the third release of the Palermo Swift-BAT hard X-ray catalog (3PBC) based on our multifrequency classification scheme. These 218 sources were classified as unidentified in our previous analyses because they lack an assigned low-energy counterpart. We searched for soft X-ray counterparts of these 218 3PBC sources in archival Swift-XRT observations obtained between 2005 January 1st and 2018 August 1st. In particular, we found 1213 archival Swift-XRT observations for 192 of the 218 unidentified sources. We found 93 possible Swift-XRT counterparts inside of the Swift-BAT positional uncertainty regions. These correspond to 73 3PBC sources, where 60 have only a single Swift-XRT detection, and 13 sources have multiple detections. We present a catalog of all the detected possible counterparts of the yet unidentified hard X-ray sources to the community as a catalog for future spectroscopic follow-up targets, together with a short catalog of our classification of the ten sources for which we found available spectra.
- Publication:
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arXiv e-prints
- Pub Date:
- August 2024
- DOI:
- 10.48550/arXiv.2408.05303
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2408.05303
- Bibcode:
- 2024arXiv240805303K
- Keywords:
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- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
- E-Print:
- 21 pages, 5 tables, 13 figures, accepted for publication in A&