Durham E-Theses Towards a Complete Census of the Compton-thick AGN Population in the Local Universe AINUL-ANNUAR, NUR,ADLYKA,BINTI How to cite: AINUL-ANNUAR, NUR,ADLYKA,BINTI (2017) Towards a Complete Census of the Compton-thick AGN Population in the Local Universe, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12357/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail:
[email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Towards a Complete Census of the Compton-thick AGN Population in the Local Universe Nur Adlyka Binti Ainul Annuar A Thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy Department of Physics Durham University United Kingdom July 2017 Dedicated to My beloved husband, Adli; parents; brother and sisters. Towards a Complete Census of the Compton-thick AGN Population in the Local Universe Nur Adlyka Binti Ainul Annuar Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2017 Abstract Many studies have shown that the majority of accretion onto supermassive black holes; i.e., active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are hidden from our view by obscuring 22 −2 \torus" of gas and dust with column densities of NH ≥ 10 cm .