paper

An isotropic full-sky sample of optically selected blazars

arXiv:2312.07508 · doi:10.1051/0004-6361/202449163

Abstract

Various high-energy phenomena in the Universe are associated with blazars, powerful active galaxies with jets pointing to the observer. Novel results relating blazars to high-energy neutrinos, cosmic rays, and even possible manifestations of new particle physics, are often based on statistical analyses of blazar samples, and uniform sky coverage is important for many of these studies. Here, we construct a uniform full-sky catalog of blazars selected by their optical emission. We define criteria of isotropy, making a special effort to cover the Galactic plane region, and compile an isotropic sample of blazars with GAIA optical magnitudes , corrected for the Galactic absorption. The sources are taken from full-sky samples selected by parsec-scale radio emission or by high-energy gamma-ray flux, both being known to efficiently select blazar-like objects. We present a catalog of 651 optically bright blazars, uniformly distributed in the sky, together with their radio, optical, X-ray and gamma-ray fluxes, and an isotropic sample of 336 confirmed BL Lac type objects. This catalog may be used in future statistical studies of energetic neutrinos, cosmic rays and gamma rays.

5 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, 2 csv data files, V3: minor changes, accepted for publication in A&A

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