Abstract

We present NuSTAR hard X-ray observations of three Type 2 quasars at z approximate to 0.4-0.5, optically selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Although the quasars show evidence for being heavily obscured, Compton-thick systems on the basis of the 2-10 keV to [O III] luminosity ratio and multiwavelength diagnostics, their X-ray absorbing column densities (N-H) are poorly known. In this analysis, (1) we study X-ray emission at > 10 keV, where X-rays from the central black hole are relatively unabsorbed, in order to better constrain N-H. (2) We further characterize the physical properties of the sources through broad-band near-UV to mid-IR spectral energy distribution analyses. One of the quasars is detected with NuSTAR at > 8 keV with a no-source probability of < 0.1%, and its X-ray band ratio suggests near Compton-thick absorption with N-H greater than or similar to 5 Chi 10(23) cm(-2). The other two quasars are undetected, and have low X-ray to mid-IR luminosity ratios in both the low-energy (2-10 keV) and high-energy (10-40 keV) X-ray regimes that are consistent with extreme, Compton-thick absorption (N-H greater than or similar to 10(24) cm(-2)). We find that for quasars at z similar to 0.5, NuSTAR provides a significant improvement compared to lower energy (< 10 keV) Chandra and XMM-Newton observations alone, as higher column densities can now be directly constrained.