OPTICAL SPECTRAL PROPERTIES OF<i>SWIFT</i>BURST ALERT TELESCOPE HARD X-RAY-SELECTED ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI SOURCES

Abstract

The Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) survey of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN)\nis providing an unprecedented view of local AGNs (&lt;z&gt; = 0.03) and their host\ngalaxy properties. In this paper, we present an analysis of the optical spectra\nof a sample of 64 AGNs from the 9-month survey, detected solely based on their\n14-195 keV flux. Our analysis includes both archived spectra from the Sloan\nDigital Sky Survey and our own observations from the 2.1-m Kitt Peak National\nObservatory telescope. Among our results, we include line ratio classifications\nutilizing standard emission line diagnostic plots, [O III] 5007 A luminosities,\nand H-beta derived black hole masses. As in our X-ray study, we find the type 2\nsources to be less luminous (in [O III] 5007 A and 14-195 keV luminosities)\nwith lower accretion rates than the type 1 sources. We find that the optically\nclassified LINERs, H II/composite galaxies, and ambiguous sources have the\nlowest luminosities, while both broad line and narrow line Seyferts have\nsimilar luminosities. From a comparison of the hard X-ray (14-195 keV) and [O\nIII] luminosities, we find that both the observed and extinction-corrected [O\nIII] luminosities are weakly correlated with X-ray luminosity. In a study of\nthe host galaxy properties from both continuum fits and measurements of the\nstellar absorption indices, we find that the hosts of the narrow line sources\nhave properties consistent with late type galaxies.\n