BlazEr1: The eROSITA Blazar Catalog. Blazars and Blazar Candidates in the First eROSITA Survey

TL;DR

The paper presents the BlazEr1 catalog, an extensive compilation of blazars and candidates detected in the first eROSITA X-ray survey, enabling detailed studies of blazar properties and future follow-up observations.

Contribution

It introduces the first large-scale X-ray catalog of blazars from eROSITA, including spectral and multiwavelength data, with a focus on catalog construction and initial analysis.

Findings

Catalog contains 5865 sources, with 2106 confirmed blazars.

2966 sources have first-time X-ray data from eROSITA.

Contamination from non-blazar sources is less than 11%.

Abstract

Aims. eROSITA, on board the Spectrum Roentgen Gamma (SRG) spacecraft, performed its first X-ray all-sky survey (eRASS1) between December 2019 and June 2020. It detected about 930000 sources, providing us with an unprecedented opportunity for a detailed blazar census. We present the properties of blazars and blazar candidates in eRASS1 and the compilation of the eROSITA blazar catalog. Methods. We compiled a list of blazar and blazar candidates from the literature and matched it with the eRASS1 catalog, constructing the Blazars in eRASS1 (BlazEr1) catalog. For sources with more than 50 counts, we obtained their X-ray spectral properties. We compiled multiwavelength data from the radio to the gamma-ray regimes for all sources, including multiwavelength spectral indices and redshifts. The full catalog is available online. Results. We present the BlazEr1 catalog, containing 5865 sources, of which 2106 are associated with confirmed blazars. For 2966 sources, eROSITA provides the first X-ray data. The contamination from non-blazar sources of the entire sample is less than 11%. Most candidates exhibit properties typical for blazars. We present the properties of the entire X-ray detected blazar population, including the distributions of X-ray luminosities and photon indices, multiwavelength properties, and the blazar log N-log S distribution. Our catalog provides follow up targets, such as potential MeV and TeV blazars. Conclusions. The BlazEr1 catalog provides a compilation of X-ray detected blazars and blazar candidates. The catalog serves as a starting point for exploiting further eROSITA surveys using the same methodology, enabling us to study the X-ray variability and a large number of spectral energy distributions of blazars in the future.