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 ( 10  keV) with 70-month averaged Swift/BAT data. The nonblazar AGNs of our sample are almost equally divided into unobscured (N 10 cm H 22 2 < -) and obscured (N 10 cm H 22 2  -) 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.

We present an observational constraint for the typical active galactic nucleus (AGN) phase lifetime. The argument is based on the time lag between an AGN central engine switching on and becoming visible in X-rays, and the time the AGN then requires to photoionize a large fraction of the host galaxy. Based on the typical light travel time across massive galaxies, and the observed fraction of X-ray selected AGN without AGN-photoionized narrow lines, we estimate that the AGN phase typically lasts ∼ 10 5 years. This lifetime is short compared to the total growth time of 10 7 − 10 9 years estimated from e.g. the Soltan argument and implies that black holes grow via many such short bursts and that AGN therefore "flicker" on and off. We discuss some consequences of this flickering behavior for AGN feedback and the analogy of X-ray binaries and AGN lifecycles.

We present the first catalog and data release of the Swift-BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey. We analyze optical spectra of the majority of the detected AGNs (77%, 642/836)based on their 14-195 keV emission in the 70-month Swift-BATall-sky catalog. This includes redshift determination, absorption and emission-line measurements, and black hole mass and accretion rate estimates for the majority of obscured and unobscured AGNs (74%, 473/642), with 340 measured for the first time. With ∼90% of sources at < z 0.2, the survey represents a significant advance in the census of hard X-ray-selected AGNs in the local universe. In this first catalog paper, we describe the spectroscopic observations and data sets, and our initial spectral analysis. The FWHMs of the emission lines show broad agreement with the X-ray obscuration (∼94%), such that Sy 1-1.8 have < N 10 H 21.9 cm −2 , and Seyfert 2 have > N 10 H 21.9 cm −2 . Seyfert 1.9, however, show a range of column densities. Compared to narrow-line AGNs in the SDSS, the X-ray-selected AGNs have a larger fraction of dusty host galaxies ( a b > H H 5), suggesting that these types of AGN are missed in optical surveys. Using the [O III] λ5007/Hβ and [N II] λ6583/Hα emission-line diagnostic, about half of the sources are classified as Seyferts; ∼15% reside in dusty galaxies that lack an Hβ detection, but for which the upper limits on line emission imply either a Seyfert or LINER,~15% are in galaxies with weak or no emission lines despite high-quality spectra, and a few percent each are LINERS, composite galaxies, H II regions, or in known beamed AGNs.

We present a new metric that uses the spectral curvature (SC) above 10 keV to identify Compton-thick AGN in low-quality Swift/BAT X-ray data. Using NuSTAR, we observe nine high SC-selected AGN. We find that high-sensitivity spectra show the majority are Compton-thick (78% or 7/9) and the remaining two are nearly Compton-thick (N H 5 − 8 × 10 23 cm −2 ). We find the SC BAT and SC NuSTAR measurements are consistent, suggesting this technique can be applied to future telescopes. We tested the SC method on wellknown Compton-thick AGN and find it is much more effective than broad band ratios (e.g. 100% using SC vs. 20% using 8-24/3-8 keV). Our results suggest that using the > 10 keV emission may be the only way to identify this population since only two sources show Compton-thick levels of excess in the Balmer decrement corrected [O III] to observed X-ray emission ratio (F [O III] /F obs 2−10 keV > 1) and WISE colors do not identify most of them as AGN. Based on this small sample, we find that a higher fraction of these AGN are in the final merger stage (<10 kpc) than typical BAT AGN. Additionally, these nine obscured AGN have, on average, ≈ 4× higher accretion rates than other BAT-detected AGN ( λ Edd = 0.068 ± 0.023 compared to λ Edd = 0.016 ± 0.004). The robustness of SC at identifying Compton-thick AGN implies a higher fraction of nearby AGN may be Compton-thick (≈ 22%) and the sum of black hole growth in Compton-thick AGN (Eddington ratio times population percentage), is nearly as large as mildly obscured and unobscured AGN.

We investigate the relationship between X-ray and optical line emission in 340 nearby (z 0.04) AGN selected above 10 keV using Swift BAT. We find a weak correlation between the extinction corrected [O III] and hard X-ray luminosity (L int [O III] ∝ L 14−195 ) with a large scatter (R Pear = 0.64, σ = 0.62 dex) and a similarly large scatter with the intrinsic 2−10 keV to [O III] luminosities (R Pear = 0.63, σ = 0.63 dex). Correlations of the hard X-ray fluxes with the fluxes of high-ionization narrow lines ([O III], He II, [Ne III] and [Ne V]) are not significantly better than with the low ionization lines (Hα, [S II]). Factors like obscuration or physical slit size are not found to be a significant part of the large scatter. In contrast, the optical emission lines show much better correlations with each other (σ = 0.3 dex) than with the X-ray flux. The inherent large scatter questions the common usage of narrow emission lines as AGN bolometric luminosity indicators and suggests that other issues such as geometrical differences in the scattering of the ionized gas or long term AGN variability are important.