Speaker
Description
Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are one of the largest class of gamma-ray sources with blazars accounting for the vast majority of the AGN associations. Despite the advancements in angular resolution and localization Fermi has offered, roughly half of the detected sources are still unassociated with a lower-energy counterpart. We propose a new method for the association of gamma-ray loud blazars by using as a discriminant their optically polarized emission. We introduce a blazar ranking parameter in order to distinguish between suitable candidates and theoretically benckmark our method. We found that for high galactic latitudes the vast majority of blazars will have higher polarization than the background interstellar polarization at the 5σ level. We apply our method to observations taken with the RoboPol polarimeter at the Skinakas Observatory.
