1WHSP: An IR-based sample of ~1000 VHE γ-ray blazar candidates
Journal
ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS
Date Issued
2015
Author(s)
DOI
10.1051/0004-6361/201424148
Description
B.A. and B.F. are supported by the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Program by Grant Number 2011-1640 and 2010-1816, respectively, from the EACEA of the European Commission. P.P. thanks the ASI Science Data Center (ASDC) for the hospitality and partial financial support for his visits. This work was supported by the ASDC, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana; University La Sapienza of Rome, Department of Physics. This publication makes use of data products from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We also make use of archival data and bibliographic information obtained from the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), data and software facilities from the ASDC managed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), and TOPCAT software ( Taylor 2005 ). We thank F. Massaro for useful discussions and the anonymous referee for her/his suggestions. The Fermi -LAT Collaboration acknowledges generous ongoing support from a number of agencies and institutes that have supported both the development and the operation of the LAT as well as scientific data analysis. These include the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Department of Energy in the United States, the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules in France, the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana and the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare in Italy, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in Japan, and the K. A. Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish National Space Board in Sweden. Additional support for science analysis during the operations phase is gratefully acknowledged from the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Italy and the Centre National d’Études Spatiales in France.
Abstract
Context. Blazars are the dominant type of extragalactic sources at microwave and at γ-ray energies. In the most energetic part of the electromagnetic spectrum (E ≳ 100 GeV) a high fraction of high Galactic latitude sources are blazars of the high synchrotron peaked (HSP) type, that is BL Lac objects with synchrotron power peaking in the UV or in the X-ray band. Building new large samples of HSP blazars is key to understand the properties of jets under extreme conditions, and to study the demographics and the peculiar cosmological evolution of these sources.
Aims: High synchrotron peaked blazars are remarkably rare, with only a few hundreds of them expected to be above the sensitivity limits of currently available surveys, some of which include hundreds of millions of sources. To find these very uncommon objects, we have devised a method that combines ALLWISE survey data with multi-frequency selection criteria.
Methods: The sample was defined starting from a primary list of infrared colour-colour selected sources from the ALLWISE all sky survey database, and applying further restrictions on IR-radio and IR-X-ray flux ratios. Using a polynomial fit to the multi-frequency data (radio to X-ray), we estimated synchrotron peak frequencies and fluxes of each object.
Results: We assembled a sample including 992 sources, which is currently the largest existing list of confirmed and candidates HSP blazars. All objects are expected to radiate up to the highest γ-ray photon energies. In fact, 299 of these are confirmed emitters of GeV γ-ray photons (based on Fermi-LAT catalogues), and 36 have already been detected in the TeV band. The majority of sources in the sample are within reach of the upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), and many may be detectable even by the current generation of Cherenkov telescopes during flaring episodes. The sample includes 425 previously known blazars, 151 new identifications, and 416 HSP candidates (mostly faint sources) for which no optical spectra is available yet. The full 1WHSP catalogue is online at http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (ftp://130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/579/A34 and also available at http://www.asdc.asi.it/1whsp/
Aims: High synchrotron peaked blazars are remarkably rare, with only a few hundreds of them expected to be above the sensitivity limits of currently available surveys, some of which include hundreds of millions of sources. To find these very uncommon objects, we have devised a method that combines ALLWISE survey data with multi-frequency selection criteria.
Methods: The sample was defined starting from a primary list of infrared colour-colour selected sources from the ALLWISE all sky survey database, and applying further restrictions on IR-radio and IR-X-ray flux ratios. Using a polynomial fit to the multi-frequency data (radio to X-ray), we estimated synchrotron peak frequencies and fluxes of each object.
Results: We assembled a sample including 992 sources, which is currently the largest existing list of confirmed and candidates HSP blazars. All objects are expected to radiate up to the highest γ-ray photon energies. In fact, 299 of these are confirmed emitters of GeV γ-ray photons (based on Fermi-LAT catalogues), and 36 have already been detected in the TeV band. The majority of sources in the sample are within reach of the upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), and many may be detectable even by the current generation of Cherenkov telescopes during flaring episodes. The sample includes 425 previously known blazars, 151 new identifications, and 416 HSP candidates (mostly faint sources) for which no optical spectra is available yet. The full 1WHSP catalogue is online at http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (ftp://130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/579/A34 and also available at http://www.asdc.asi.it/1whsp/
Volume
579
Start page
A34
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