We present optical spectroscopy of candidate AGN pinpointed by a Swift follow-up campaign on unidentified transients in the XMM-Newton Slew Survey , increasing the completeness of the identifications of AGN in the Survey .
Our Swift follow-up campaign identified 17 XRT-detected candidate AGN , of which nine were selected for optical follow-up and a further two were confirmed as AGN elsewhere .
Using data obtained at the William Herschel Telescope , Very Large Telescope and New Technology Telescope , we find AGN features in seven of the candidates .
We classify six as Seyfert types 1.0 to 1.5 , with broad-line region velocities spanning 2000–12000 km s ^ { -1 } , and identify one as a possible Type II AGN , consistent with the lack of a soft band X-ray detection in the Slew Survey .
The Virial black hole mass estimates for the sample lie between 1 \times 10 ^ { 8 } M _ { \odot } and 3 \times 10 ^ { 9 } M _ { \odot } , with one source likely emitting close to its Eddington rate , L _ { Bol } / L _ { Edd } \sim 0.9 .
We find a wide redshift range of 0.08 < z < 0.9 for the nine now confirmed AGN drawn from the unidentified Slew Survey sample .
One source remaining unclassified shows outbursts rarely seen before in AGN .
We conclude that AGN discovered in this way are consistent with the largely non-varying , Slew-selected , known AGN population .
We also find parallels with XMM-Newton Bright Serendipitous Survey AGN selected from pointed observations , and postulate that shallow X-ray surveys select AGN drawn from the same populations that have been characterised in deeper X-ray selected samples .