A Complete Census Compton-thick AGN in the local Universe from Swift BAT

Heavily obscured accretion is believed to be an extremely important phase in thegrowth of supermassive black holes, and to produce a signi cant fraction of theCosmic Xray background. Studying in detail the broadband Xray emission of the830 AGN reported in the 70months Swift/BAT catalog, we found evidence of CTobscuration in 55 objects, which makes this the largest sample of CT AGN in thelocal Universe. We propose to observe the remaining 10/55 sources which lack anXMMNewton or Suzaku observation as a ful l program. These observations willconstrain the brightest end of the luminosity function of CT AGN and theevolution of the covering factor of the CT material, besides serving as abenchmark to study luminous CT AGN at higher redshifts. truncated!, Please see actual data for full text [truncated!, Please see actual data for full text]