TeV candidate BL Lac objects

¹ Università Statale di Milano, via Celoria 16, 20133 Milano, Italy
² Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, via Bianchi 46, 23807 Merate, Italy

Corresponding author: L. Costamante, costa@merate.mi.astro.it

Received: 1 October 2001
Accepted: 6 December 2001

Abstract

The TeV emission of low power BL Lac objects has been established by the detection of an handful of them. The knowledge of the level of the TeV emission and its spectrum can shed light on the particle acceleration mechanisms, and it is especially important to assess the still uncertain level of the far infrared background radiation, which can absorb the TeV photons through photon–photon interactions. In view of these implications, it is necessary to enlarge the number of TeV detected sources, and to find them at different redshifts. To this aim, we propose a general and simple criterium to select the best TeV candidates, and produce a list of them with flux estimates above 40 GeV, 300 GeV and 1 TeV.