Probing properties of nearly two-hundred new active galactic nuclei

Abstract

We present a comprehensive analysis of the X-ray spectral properties of 198 newly identified active galactic nuclei (AGNs), leveraging archival data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. All these AGNs exhibit a powerlaw spectral signature spanning a broad energy range of 0.5 − 7.0 keV, characterized by the photon index (Γ) values ranging from $0.3^{+0.16}_{-0.14}$ to $2.54^{+0.14}_{-0.13}$. Particularly, 76 of these AGNs display discernible levels of intrinsic absorption, after considering the Galactic absorption. The column densities associated with this local absorption ($n_{\rm H}^{\rm local}$) are within a range of ∼1019 − 1022 cm−2. We study the cosmological evolution of AGNs using the variation of $n_{\rm H}^{\rm local}$ and Γ with their estimated redshift. The intrinsic spectral signature did not reveal any significant cosmological evolution; however, a deficit of hard sources at high redshift is possibly intrinsic. Our sample covers several orders of broadband intrinsic luminosity ($L_{\rm B}^{\rm intr}$) ranging from $4.59^{+0.41}_{-0.41} \times 10^{42}$ to $2.4^{+0.12}_{-0.12} \times 10^{46}\, {\rm erg~s}^{-1}$ with peak at 1.84 redshift. We also investigate the hardness-luminosity diagram (HLD) to further probe the AGNs. We conduct a sanity check by applying our findings to known AGNs, and the results are consistent with our observations.