BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey. V. X-Ray Properties of the Swift/BAT 70-month AGN Catalog

Abstract

Hard X-ray (≥10 keV) observations of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) can shed light on some of the most obscured episodes of accretion onto supermassive black holes. The 70-month Swift/BAT all-sky survey, which probes the 14-195 keV energy range, has currently detected 838 AGNs. We report here on the broadband X-ray (0.3-150 keV) characteristics of these AGNs, obtained by combining XMM-Newton, Swift/XRT, ASCA, Chandra, and Suzaku observations in the soft X-ray band (≤slant 10 keV) with 70-month averaged Swift/BAT data. The nonblazar AGNs of our sample are almost equally divided into unobscured ({N}<SUB>{{H</SUB>}}< {10}<SUP>22</SUP> {{cm}}<SUP>-2</SUP>) and obscured ({N}<SUB>{{H</SUB>}}≥slant {10}<SUP>22</SUP> {{cm}}<SUP>-2</SUP>) AGNs, and their Swift/BAT continuum is systematically steeper than the 0.3-10 keV emission, which suggests that the presence of a high-energy cutoff is almost ubiquitous. We discuss the main X-ray spectral parameters obtained, such as the photon index, the reflection parameter, the energy of the cutoff, neutral and ionized absorbers, and the soft excess for both obscured and unobscured AGNs.