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SLAC Publication: SLAC-PUB-14894
SLAC Release Date: April 2, 2012
The WISE Gamma-Ray Strip Parametrization: The Nature of the Gamma-Ray Active Galactic Nuclei of Uncertain Type
Massaro, Francesco.
Despite the large number of discoveries made recently by Fermi, the origins of the so called unidentified y-ray sources remain unknown. The large number of these sources suggests that among them there could be a population that significantly contributes to the isotropic gamma-ray background and is therefore crucial tounderstand their nature. The first step toward a complete comprehension of the unidentified y-ray source population is to identify those that can be associated with blazars, the mos... Show Full Abstract
Despite the large number of discoveries made recently by Fermi, the origins of the so called unidentified y-ray sources remain unknown. The large number of these sources suggests that among them there could be a population that significantly contributes to the isotropic gamma-ray background and is therefore crucial tounderstand their nature. The first step toward a complete comprehension of the unidentified y-ray source population is to identify those that can be associated with blazars, the most numerous class of extragalactic sources in the y-ray sky. Recently, we discovered that blazars can be recognized and separated from other extragalactic sources using the infrared (IR) WISE satellite colors. The blazar population delineates a remarkable and distinctive region of the IR color-color space, the WISE blazar strip. In particular, the subregion delineated by the y-ray emitting blazars is even narrower and we named it as the WISE Gamma-ray Strip (WGS). In this paper we parametrize the WGS on the basis of a single parameter s that we then use to determine if y-ray Active Galactic Nuclei of the undertain type (AGUs) detected by Fermi are consistent with teh WGS and so can be considered blazar candidates. We find that 54 AGUs out of a set 60 analyzed have IR colors consistent with the WGS; only 6 AGUs are outliers. This result implies that a very high percentage (ie, in this sample about 90%) of the AGUs detectied by Fermi are indeed blazar candidates. Show Partial Abstract
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  • Interest Categories: Astrophysics