Selecting a complete sample of blazars in sub-millimetre catalogues

Abstract

The \textit{Herschel} Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey (H-ATLAS), that has covered about 642 sq. deg. in 5 bands from 100 to 500 $\mu \mathrm{m}$, allows a blind flux-limited selection of blazars at sub-mm wavelengths. However, blazars constitute a tiny fraction of H-ATLAS sources and therefore identifying them is not a trivial task. Using the data on known blazars detected by the H-ATLAS we have defined a locus for 500\,$\mu$m selected blazars and exploited it to select blazar candidates in the H-ATLAS fields. Candidates and known blazars in the H-ATLAS equatorial and South Galactic Pole fields were followed up with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) or with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), and matched with existing radio- and mm-catalogues to reconstruct the spectral behaviour over at least 6 orders of magnitude in frequency. We identified a selection approach that, combining the information in the sub-mm and radio domains, efficiently singles out genuine blazars. In this way, we identified a sample of 39 blazars brighter than $S_{500\mu \mathrm{m}}=35$mJy in the H-ATLAS fields. Tests made cross-matching the H-ATLAS catalogues with large catalogues of blazar candidates indicate that the sample is complete. The derived counts are compared with model predictions finding good consistency with the C2Ex model and with estimates based on ALMA data.

16 pages, 7 figures, accepted by MNRAS

References in corpus (45)

• Herschel Space Observatory - An ESA facility for far-infrared and submillimetre astronomy
• The Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) on the Herschel Space Observatory
• The Herschel-SPIRE instrument and its in-flight performance
• Fermi Large Area Telescope Fourth Source Catalog
• A Unifying View of the Spectral Energy Distributions of Blazars
• Multi-messenger observations of a flaring blazar coincident with high-energy neutrino IceCube-170922A
• The Spectral Energy Distribution of Fermi bright blazars
• The GMRT 150 MHz All-sky Radio Survey: First Alternative Data Release TGSS ADR1
• The Herschel ATLAS
• General physical properties of bright Fermi blazars
• The Australia Telescope 20 GHz Survey: The Source Catalogue
• The 5th edition of the Roma-BZCAT. A short presentation
• Planck Early Results. VII. The Early Release Compact Source Catalog
• CGRaBS: An All-Sky Survey of Gamma-Ray Blazar Candidates
• Simultaneous Planck, Swift, and Fermi observations of X-ray and gamma-ray selected blazars
• The Herschel-ATLAS Data Release 1 Paper I: Maps, Catalogues and Number Counts
• A $\gamma$-ray determination of the Universe's star-formation history
• Identification of the infrared non-thermal emission in Blazars
• Extragalactic millimeter-wave point source catalog, number counts and statistics from 771 square degrees of the SPT-SZ Survey
• The Herschel-ATLAS: a sample of 500μm-selected lensed galaxies over 600 square degrees
• Radiative Processes in High Energy Astrophysics
• High--frequency predictions for number counts and spectral properties of extragalactic radio sources. New evidences of a break at mm wavelengths in spectra of bright blazar sources
• Investigation of two Fermi-LAT gamma-ray blazars coincident with high-energy neutrinos detected by IceCube
• The Australia Telescope 20 GHz (AT20G) Survey: The Bright Source Sample
• The Australia Telescope 20GHz (AT20G) Survey: analysis of the extragalactic source sample
• General Physical Properties of CGRaBS Blazars
• Two new catalogs of blazar candidates in the WISE infrared sky
• The Extragalactic Gamma-ray Sky in the Fermi era
• The physical properties of Fermi BL Lac objects jets
• New hard-TeV extreme blazars detected with the MAGIC telescopes
• The Planck-ATCA Co-eval Observations (PACO) project: the bright sample
• The Herschel-ATLAS Data Release 2 Paper II: Catalogues of far-infrared and submillimetre sources in the fields at the south and north Galactic Poles
• Deriving the contribution of blazars to the Fermi-LAT Extragalactic $\gamma$-ray background at $E>10$ GeV with efficiency corrections and photon statistics
• The AT20G high angular resolution catalogue
• Planck intermediate results. LIV. The Planck Multi-frequency Catalogue of Non-thermal Sources
• Global millimeter VLBI array survey of ultracompact extragalactic radio sources at 86 GHz
• ALMA photometry of extragalactic radio sources
• Herschel-ATLAS: blazars in the SDP field
• The Planck-ATCA Coeval Observations (PACO) project: the faint sample
• Multi-frequency polarimetry of a complete sample of PACO radio sources
• Characterization of polarimetric and total intensity behaviour of a complete sample of PACO radio sources in the radio bands
• The Planck-ATCA Co-eval Observations (PACO) project: the spectrally-selected sample
• AGN torus emission for a homogeneous sample of bright FSRQs
• Planck intermediate results. LV. Reliability and thermal properties of high-frequency sources in the Second Planck Catalogue of Compact Sources
• ALMA Band 3 polarimetric follow-up of a complete sample of faint PACO sources

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Very long baseline interferometry observations of the high-redshift blazar candidate J0141-5427
• Interpreting the statistical properties of high-z extragalactic sources detected by the South Pole Telescope survey