GALEX measurements of the Big Blue Bump as a tool to study bolometric corrections in AGNs

TL;DR

This study uses GALEX UV measurements combined with optical and X-ray data to analyze the spectral energy distribution of 83 AGNs, focusing on the accretion disk emission and bolometric corrections.

Contribution

It provides new constraints on the accretion disk luminosity and bolometric corrections in AGNs using multi-wavelength data, including UV, optical, and X-ray observations.

Findings

Constrained the accretion disk luminosity in AGNs.

Calculated bolometric corrections across a large AGN sample.

Analyzed spectral energy distributions from UV to X-ray.

Abstract

Active Galactic Nuclei emit over the entire electromagnetic spectrum with the peak of the accretion disk emission in the far-UV, a wavelength range historically difficult to investigate. We use here the GALEX (Galaxy Evolution Explorer) Near-UV and Far-UV measurements (complemented with optical data from Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and XMM-Newton X-ray spectra) of a sample of 83 X-ray selected type 1 AGN extracted from the XMM-Newton Bright Serendipitous Survey to study their spectral energy distribution (SED) in the optical, Near and Far-UV and X-ray energy bands. We have constrained the luminosity of the accretion disk emission component and calculated the hard X-ray bolometric corrections for a significant sample of AGN spanning a large range in properties (z, L(x)).