2006ApJ...649L..21B

We found a very likely counterpart to the recently discovered hard X-ray source IGR J2018+4043 in the multiwavelength observations of the source field. The source, originally discovered in the 20-40 keV band, is now confidently detected also in the 40-80 keV band, with a flux of (1.4±0.4)x10^–11 ergs/cm2/s. A 5 ks Swift observation of the IGR J2018+4043 field revealed a hard pointlike source with an observed 0.5-10 keV flux of 3.4^+0.7_–0.8x10^–12 ergs/cm2/s (90% confidence level) at α=20^h18^m38{fs}55, δ=+40°41'00".4 (with a 4".2 uncertainty). The combined Swift-INTEGRAL spectrum can be described by an absorbed power-law model with photon index Γ=1.3±0.2 and N_H=6.1^+3.2_–2.2x10²²/cm2. In archival optical and infrared data we found a slightly extended and highly absorbed object at the Swift source position. There is also an extended VLA 1.4 GHz source peaked at a beamwidth distance from the optical and X-ray positions. The observed morphology and multiwavelength spectra of IGR J2018+4043 are consistent with those expected for an obscured accreting object, i.e., an AGN or a Galactic X-ray binary. The identification suggests possible connection of IGR J2018+4043 to the bright γ-ray source GEV J2020+4023 detected by COS B and CGRO EGRET.