Searching for the most distant blazars with the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope

Abstract

We investigate the prospects for discovering blazars at very high-redshifts (z>3-6) with the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope (Fermi), employing a model for the evolving gamma-ray luminosity function (GLF) of the blazar population. Our previous GLF model is used as a basis, which features luminosity-dependent density evolution implied from X-ray data on active galactic nuclei, as well as the blazar sequence paradigm for their spectral energy distribution, and which is consistent with EGRET and current Fermi observations of blazars.Here we augment the high-redshift evolution of this model by utilizing the luminosity function of quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which is well-constrained up to z~5. We find that Fermi may discover a few blazars up to z~6 in the entire sky during its 5-year survey. We further discuss how such high-redshift blazar candidates may be efficiently selected in future Fermi data.

6 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• The Second Catalog of Active Galactic Nuclei Detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• The Imprint of The Extragalactic Background Light in the Gamma-Ray Spectra of Blazars
• Extragalactic Background Light from Hierarchical Galaxy Formation: Gamma-ray Attenuation up to the Epoch of Cosmic Reionization and the First Stars
• Contribution of the Gamma-ray Loud Radio Galaxies Core Emissions to the Cosmic MeV and GeV Gamma-Ray Background Radiation
• Surveys with the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• Active Galactic Nuclei under the scrutiny of CTA
• The Contribution of Blazars to the Extragalactic Diffuse Gamma-ray Background and Their Future Spatial Resolution
• Prospects for future very high-energy gamma-ray sky survey: impact of secondary gamma rays
• X-ray and Radio Follow-up Observations of High-Redshift Blazar Candidates in the Fermi-LAT Unassociated Source Population
• Upper Bound on the First Star Formation History
• Extragalactic Gamma-ray Background Radiation from Beamed and Unbeamed Active Galactic Nuclei