Swift Simultaneous UV, Optical, and X-Ray Observed Quasar Catalog
Short Name:
SWSDSSQSO
Date:
07 Mar 2025
Publisher:
NASA/GSFC HEASARC
Description:
The authors have compiled a catalog of optically selected quasars with simultaneous observations in UV/optical and X-ray bands by the Swift Gamma-ray Burst Explorer. Objects in this catalog are identified by matching the Swift pointings with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 5 (DR5) quasar catalog. The final catalog contains 843 objects, among which 637 have both Ultraviolet Optical Telescope (UVOT) and X-Ray Telescope (XRT) observations and 354 of which are detected by both instruments. The overall X-ray detection rate is ~ 60% which rises to ~ 85% among sources with at least 10 ks of XRT exposure time. The authors construct the time-averaged spectral energy distribution (SED) for each of the 354 quasars using UVOT photometric measurements and XRT spectra. From model fits to these SEDs, they find that the big blue bump contributes about ~ 0.3 dex to the quasar luminosity. The authors re-visit the alpha<sub>ox</sub> - L<sub>2500A</sub> relation by selecting a clean sample with only Type 1 radio-quiet quasars; the dispersion of this relation is reduced by at least 15% compared with studies that use non-simultaneous UV/optical and X-ray data. They find only a weak correlation between L<sub>bol</sub>/L<sub>Edd</sub> and alpha<sub>UV</sub>. They do not find significant correlations between alpha<sub>x</sub> and alpha<sub>ox</sub>, alpha<sub>ox</sub> and alpha<sub>UV</sub>, and alpha<sub>x</sub> and log L(0.3-10 keV). The correlations between alpha<sub>UV</sub> and alpha<sub>x</sub>, alpha<sub>ox</sub> and alpha<sub>x</sub>, alpha<sub>ox</sub> and alpha<sub>UV</sub>, L<sub>bol</sub>/L<sub>Edd</sub> and alpha<sub>x</sub>, and L<sub>bol</sub>/L<sub>Edd</sub> and alpha<sub>ox</sub> are stronger among low-redshift quasars, indicating that these correlations are likely driven by the changes of SED shape with accretion state. This quasar sample was compiled in the following steps: 1. Candidate objects for the catalog were selected as any SDSS DR5 quasar that lie within 20 arcminutes of the center of the Swift FOV in any pointing from launch through 2008 June. 2. XRT data were processed to obtain X-ray count rates, spectra, and spectral parameters. 3. UVOT data were processed to obtain UV and optical photometry. 4. UVOT photometry were supplemented with measurements at other wavelengths from published catalogs. 5. Quasar SEDs were constructed. 6. Additional parameters were calculated based on the SEDs of each quasar. The raw sample is constructed by matching 3.5 years Swift pointings and the SDSS DR5 quasar catalog and contains 1034 objects. This HEASARC version of this catalog contains all 1034 objects in the "raw" catalog. To select only the 843 objects in the "final" catalog, the user should specify catalog_flag = 1 in any searches of this table. This table was created by the HEASARC in August 2012 based on an electronic version of Table 8 from the reference paper which was obtained from the ApJS web site. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .
