Searching for gamma-ray blazar candidates among the unidentified INTEGRAL sources

TL;DR

This study applies a new infrared color-based method to identify gamma-ray blazar candidates among unidentified INTEGRAL sources, finding potential counterparts and confirming some in X-ray and optical data, advancing gamma-ray source identification.

Contribution

The paper introduces and applies a novel IR color-based association method to identify gamma-ray blazar candidates among INTEGRAL sources, expanding the identification techniques in gamma-ray astronomy.

Findings

18 out of 86 analyzed UISs have gamma-ray blazar candidates.

7 out of 10 candidates are detected in X-ray and/or optical-UV bands.

Discrepancies between INTEGRAL and soft X-ray spectra prevent confirmation of associations.

Abstract

The identification of low-energy counterparts for gamma-ray sources is one of the biggest challenge in modern gamma-ray astronomy. Recently, we developed and successfully applied a new association method to recognize gamma-ray blazar candidates that could be possible counterparts for the unidentified gamma-ray sources above 100 MeV in the second Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) catalog (2FGL). This method is based on the Infrared (IR) colors of the recent Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) all-sky survey. In this letter we applied our new association method to the case of unidentified INTEGRAL sources (UISs) listed in the fourth soft gamma-ray source catalog (4IC). Only 86 UISs out of the 113 can be analyzed, due to the sky coverage of the WISE Preliminary data release. Among these 86 UISs, we found that 18 appear to have a gamma-ray blazar candidate within their positional error region. Finally, we analyzed the SWIFT archival data available for 10 out these 18 gamma-ray blazar candidates, and we found that 7 out of 10 are clearly detected in soft X-rays and/or in the optical-ultraviolet band. We cannot confirm the associations between the UISs and the selected gamma-ray blazar candidates due to the discrepancies between the INTEGRAL and the soft X-ray spectra. However, the discovery of the soft X-ray counterparts for the selected gamma-ray blazar candidates adds an important clue to help understand their origin and to confirm their blazar nature.