About SciDoc
Document Search

DOCUMENT METADATA
SLAC Publication: SLAC-PUB-14895
SLAC Release Date: April 2, 2012
Unidentified Gamma-Ray Sources: Hunting Gamma-Ray Blazars
Massaro, Francesco.
One of the main scientific objectives of the ongoing Fermi mission is unveiling the nature of the unidentified y-ray sources (UGSs). Despite the large improvements of Fermi in the localization of y-ray sources with respect to the past y-ray missions, about one third of the Fermi-detected objects are still not associated to low energy counterparts. Recently, using the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) survey, we discovered that blazars, the rarest class of Active Galactic Nuclei and the ... Show Full Abstract
One of the main scientific objectives of the ongoing Fermi mission is unveiling the nature of the unidentified y-ray sources (UGSs). Despite the large improvements of Fermi in the localization of y-ray sources with respect to the past y-ray missions, about one third of the Fermi-detected objects are still not associated to low energy counterparts. Recently, using the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) survey, we discovered that blazars, the rarest class of Active Galactic Nuclei and the largest population of y-ray sources, can be recognized and separated from other extragalactic sources on the basis of their infrared (IR) colors. Based on this result, we designed an association method for the y-ray sources to recognize if there is a blazar candidate within the positional uncertainty region of a generic y-ray source. With this new IR diagnostic tool, we searched for y-ray blazar candidates associated to the UGS sample of the second Fermi y-ray catalog (2FGL). We found that our method associates at least one y-ray blazar candidate as a counterpart each of 156 out of 313 UGSs analyzed. These new low-energy candidates have the same IR properties as the blazars associated to y-ray sources in the 2FGL catalog. Show Partial Abstract
Download File:
  • Interest Categories: Astrophysics