The Second Catalog of Active Galactic Nuclei Detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope

TL;DR

This paper presents the second catalog of active galactic nuclei detected by the Fermi LAT, including 886 high-confidence AGNs with detailed classifications, spectral properties, and an improved source count over the previous catalog.

Contribution

It provides a significantly expanded and refined catalog of gamma-ray AGNs, with detailed spectral and classification data, improving upon the first LAT AGN catalog.

Findings

886 high-confidence AGNs identified

Half of BL Lacs have synchrotron-peak >10^15 Hz

52% increase in associated sources compared to 1LAC

Abstract

The second catalog of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) in two years of scientific operation is presented. The Second LAT AGN Catalog (2LAC) includes 1017 gamma-ray sources located at high Galactic latitudes (|b|>10{\deg}) that are detected with a test statistic greater than 25 and associated statistically with AGNs. However some of these are affected by analysis issues and some are associated with multiple AGNs. Consequently we define a clean sample which includes 886 AGNs, comprising 395 BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs), 310 flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs), 157 candidate blazars of unknown type (i.e., with broad-band blazar characteristics but with no optical spectral measurement yet), eight misaligned AGNs, four narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLS1s), 10 AGNs of other types and two starburst galaxies. Where possible, the blazars have been further classified based on their spectral energy distributions (SEDs) as archival radio, optical, and X-ray data permit. While almost all FSRQs have a synchrotron-peak frequency 10^14 Hz, about half of the BL Lacs have a synchrotron-peak frequency >10^15 Hz. The 2LAC represents a significant improvement relative to the First LAT AGN Catalog (1LAC), with 52% more associated sources. The full characterization of the newly detected sources will require more broad-band data. Various properties, such as gamma-ray fluxes and photon power law spectral indices, redshifts, gamma-ray luminosities, variability, and archival radio luminosities---and their correlations are presented and discussed for the different blazar classes. The general trends observed in 1LAC are confirmed.