1WHSP: An IR-based sample of ~1000 VHE γ-ray blazar candidates^⋆

¹ Sapienza Università di Roma, ICRADipartimento di Fisica, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Roma, Italy
e-mail: bruno.arsioli@asdc.asi.it; paolo.giommi@asdc.asi.it, bernardo.machado@icra.it
² Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, Nice, Cedex 2, Grand Château Parc Valrose, 06103 Nice Cedex 2, France
³ ASI Science Data Center, ASDC, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, via del Politecnico snc, 00133 Roma, Italy
⁴ ICRANet-Rio, CBPF, Rua Dr. Xavier Sigaud 150, 22290-180 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
⁵ European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany
⁶ Associated to INAF–Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, via Frascati 33, 00040 Monteporzio Catone, Italy

Received: 6 May 2014
Accepted: 1 April 2015

Abstract

Context. Blazars are the dominant type of extragalactic sources at microwave and at γ-ray energies. In the most energetic part of the electromagnetic spectrum (E ≳ 100 GeV) a high fraction of high Galactic latitude sources are blazars of the high synchrotron peaked (HSP) type, that is BL Lac objects with synchrotron power peaking in the UV or in the X-ray band. Building new large samples of HSP blazars is key to understand the properties of jets under extreme conditions, and to study the demographics and the peculiar cosmological evolution of these sources.

Aims. High synchrotron peaked blazars are remarkably rare, with only a few hundreds of them expected to be above the sensitivity limits of currently available surveys, some of which include hundreds of millions of sources. To find these very uncommon objects, we have devised a method that combines ALLWISE survey data with multi-frequency selection criteria.

Methods. The sample was defined starting from a primary list of infrared colour–colour selected sources from the ALLWISE all sky survey database, and applying further restrictions on IR-radio and IR-X-ray flux ratios. Using a polynomial fit to the multi-frequency data (radio to X-ray), we estimated synchrotron peak frequencies and fluxes of each object.

Results. We assembled a sample including 992 sources, which is currently the largest existing list of confirmed and candidates HSP blazars. All objects are expected to radiate up to the highest γ-ray photon energies. In fact, 299 of these are confirmed emitters of GeV γ-ray photons (based on Fermi-LAT catalogues), and 36 have already been detected in the TeV band. The majority of sources in the sample are within reach of the upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), and many may be detectable even by the current generation of Cherenkov telescopes during flaring episodes. The sample includes 425 previously known blazars, 151 new identifications, and 416 HSP candidates (mostly faint sources) for which no optical spectra is available yet. The full 1WHSP catalogue is online at http://www.asdc.asi.it/1whsp/, providing a direct link to the SED building tool where multi-frequency data for each source can be easily visualised.