The WISE Blazar-Like Radio-Loud Sources: An All-Sky Catalog Of Candidate Gamma-Ray Blazars

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive all-sky catalog of radio-loud candidate gamma-ray blazars identified through WISE infrared colors and radio surveys, aiding the identification of unassociated high-energy sources.

Contribution

The paper presents a new large catalog of candidate gamma-ray blazars selected via WISE infrared colors and radio data, improving identification methods for high-energy sources.

Findings

Catalog contains 7855 candidate blazars including BL Lacs and FSRQs.

1295 sources are spatially associated with confirmed blazars.

The catalog provides a valuable resource for identifying counterparts to unassociated gamma-ray sources.

Abstract

We present a catalog of radio-loud candidate gamma-ray emitting blazars with WISE mid-infrared colors similar to the colors of confirmed gamma-ray blazars. The catalog is assembled from WISE sources detected in all four WISE filters, with colors compatible with the three-dimensional locus of the WISE gamma-ray emitting blazars, and which can be spatially cross-matched with radio sources from either one of the three radio surveys: NVSS, FIRST and/or SUMSS. Our initial WISE selection uses a slightly modified version of previously successful algorithms. We then select only the radio-loud sources using a measure of the radio-to-IR flux, the q22 parameter, which is analogous to the q24 parameter known in the literature but which instead uses the WISE band-four flux at 22 micron. Our final catalog contains 7855 sources classified as BL Lacs, FSRQs or mixed candidate blazars; 1295 of these sources can be spatially re-associated with confirmed blazars. We describe the properties of the final catalog of WISE blazar-like radio-loud sources and consider possible contaminants. Finally, we discuss why this large catalog of candidate gamma-ray emitting blazars represents a new and useful resource to address the problem of finding low energy counterparts to currently unidentified high-energy sources.