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Description
Surveys above 10 keV represent one of the best resources to provide an unbiased census of the population of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The authors present the results of 60 months of observation from 2005 March to 2010 March of the hard X-ray sky with the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT). In this time frame, BAT detected (in the 15 - 55 keV band) 720 sources with a signal-to-noise ratio of >= 5 sigma in an all-sky survey, of which 428 are associated with AGNs, most of which are nearby. This sample has negligible incompleteness and statistics which are a factor of ~ 2 larger over similarly complete sets of AGNs. The sample contains (at least) 15 bona fide Compton-thick AGNs and 3 likely candidates. Compton-thick AGNs represent ~ 5% of AGN samples detected above 15 keV. The authors use the BAT data set to refine the determination of the log N - log S of AGNs which is extremely important, now that NuSTAR prepares for launch, toward assessing the AGN contribution to the cosmic X-ray background. The authors show that the log N - log S of AGNs selected above 10 keV is now established to ~ 10% precision. They derive the luminosity function of Compton-thick AGNs and measure a space density of 7.9 (+4.1, -2.9) x 10<sup>-5</sup> Mpc<sup>-3</sup> for objects with a de-absorbed luminosity larger than 2 x 10<sup>42</sup> erg s<sup>-1</sup>. As the BAT AGNs are all mostly local, they allow us to investigate the spatial distribution of AGNs in the nearby universe regardless of absorption. The authors find concentrations of AGNs that coincide spatially with the largest congregations of matter in the local (<= 85 Mpc) universe. There is some evidence that the fraction of Seyfert 2 objects is larger than average in the direction of these dense regions. This table was created by the HEASARC in May 2012, based on an electronic version of Table 1 from the referenced paper, which was obtained from the ApJ website. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .
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