ROXA: a new multi-frequency large sample of blazars selected with SDSS and 2dF optical spectroscopy

Abstract

Context. Although blazars make of a small fraction of the overall AGN population, they are expected to be the dominant population of extragalactic sources in the hard X-ray and gamma-ray bands and have been shown to be the largest contaminant of CMB fluctuation maps. So far the number of known blazars is of the order of several hundreds, but the forthcoming AGILE, GLAST and Planck space observatories will detect several thousand objects of this type. Aims. In preparation for these missions it is necessary to identify new samples of blazars to study their multi-frequency characteristics and statistical properties. Methods. We compiled a sample of objects with blazar-like properties via a cross-correlation between large radio (NVSS, ATCAPMN) and X-ray surveys (RASS) using the SDSS-DR4 and 2dF survey data to spectroscopically identify our candidates and test the validity of the selection method. Results. We present the Radio–Optical–X-ray catalog built at ASDC (ROXA), a list of 816 objects among which 510 are confirmed blazars. Only 19% of the candidates were certain non-blazars, demonstrating the high efficiency of our selection method. Conclusions. Our catalog includes 173 new blazar identifications, or about 10% of all presently known blazars. The relatively high flux threshold in the X-ray energy band (given by the RASS survey) preferentially selects objects with high fx/fr ratio leading to the discovery of new High Energy Peaked BL Lac (HBLs). Our catalog therefore includes many new potential targets for GeV–TeV observations.