A Catalog of Candidate High-redshift Blazars for GLAST

Technical Report · Wed Sep 27 04:00:00 EDT 2006

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/892606· OSTI ID:892606

Arias, Tersi M

High-redshift blazars are promising candidates for detection by the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST). GLAST, expected to be launched in the Fall of 2007, is a high-energy gamma-ray observatory designed for making observations of celestial gamma-ray sources in the energy band extending from 10 MeV to more than 200 GeV. It is estimated that GLAST will find several thousand blazars. The motivations for measuring the gamma-ray emission from distant blazars include the study of the high-energy emission processes occurring in these sources and an indirect measurement of the extragalactic background light. In anticipation of the launch of GLAST we have compiled a catalog of candidate high-redshift blazars. The criteria for sources chosen for the catalog were: high radio emission, high redshift, and a flat radio spectrum. A preliminary list of 307 radio sources brighter than 70mJy with a redshift z {ge} 2.5 was acquired using data from the NASA Extragalactic Database. Flux measurements of each source were obtained at two or more radio frequencies from surveys and catalogs to calculate their radio spectral indices {alpha}. The sources with a flat-radio spectrum ({alpha} {le} 0.5) were selected for the catalog, and the final catalog includes about 200 sources.

• Research Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-76SF00515
• OSTI ID: 892606
• Report Number(s): SLAC-TN-06-025
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
Astrophysics
OTHER
CATALOGS
COSMIC GAMMA SOURCES
GAMMA DETECTION
RED SHIFT
TELESCOPES