Identification of New Gamma-Ray Blazar Candidates With Multifrequency Archival Observations

Abstract

Blazars are a highly-variable, radio-loud subclass of active galactic nuclei (AGN). In order to better understand such objects we must be able to easily identify candidate blazars from the growing population of unidentified sources. Working towards this goal we attempt to identify new gamma-ray blazar candidates from a sample of 102 previously unidentified sources. These sources are selected from Astronomer's Telegrams and the literature on the basis of non-periodic variability and multi-wavelength behavior. We then attempt to associate these objects to an IR counterpart in the WISE all-sky survey. We are able to identify sixteen candidate sources whose IR colors are consistent with those of the blazar population. Of those sixteen, thirteen sources have IR colors indicative of being gamma-ray emitting blazar candidates. These sources all possess archival multi-wavelength observations that support their blazar-like nature.

29 pages, 1 figure, 3 tables, AJ accepted for publication (pre-proof version)

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Cited by in corpus (17)

• Fermi Large Area Telescope Fourth Source Catalog
• The 105 month Swift-BAT all-sky hard X-ray survey
• The WISE Blazar-Like Radio-Loud Sources: An All-Sky Catalog Of Candidate Gamma-Ray Blazars
• Two new catalogs of blazar candidates in the WISE infrared sky
• Optical spectroscopic observations of gamma-ray blazars candidates I: preliminary results
• Optical spectroscopic observations of blazars and gamma-ray blazar candidates in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release Nine
• The Gamma-ray Blazar Quest: new optical spectra, state of art and future perspectives
• Refining the associations of the Fermi Large Area Telescope Source Catalogs
• Optical Spectroscopic Observations of Gamma-Ray Blazar Candidates. VII. Follow-up Campaign in the Southern Hemisphere
• Optical archival spectra of blazar candidates of uncertain type in the 3${}^{rd}$ Fermi Large Area Telescope Catalog
• Optical spectroscopic observations of gamma-ray blazar candidates VIII: the 2016-2017 follow up campaign carried out at SPM, NOT, KPNO and SOAR telescopes
• An optical overview of blazars with LAMOST I: Hunting changing-look blazars and new redshift estimates
• Optical spectroscopic observations of low-energy counterparts of Fermi-LAT gamma-ray sources
• Exploratory Spectroscopy of Magnetic Cataclysmic Variables Candidates and Other Variable Objects
• Evaluating Optical Classification for {\em Fermi} Blazar Candidates with a Statistical method using Broadband Spectral Indices
• Chasing candidate Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients in the 1,000 orbits INTEGRAL/IBIS catalog
• A multifrequency characterization of the extragalactic hard X-ray sky