Imaging Redshift Estimates for BL Lacertae Objects

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: We describe an imaging campaign to constrain the redshifts of candidate or known gamma-ray BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs) for which redshifts remain undetermined despite prior spectroscopy. As it has been argued that BL Lac host galaxies are roughly standard candles, a BL Lac host detection provides a redshift estimate. Similarly, a host flux upper limit yields a redshift lower limit. By obtaining high dynamic range, good natural seeing i′ images of 49 BL Lacs, we detected 25 of their host galaxies (resulting in redshift estimates) and placed flux upper limits on the remaining 24 hosts (resulting in redshift lower bounds). The mean of the fit redshifts (and lower limits) is higher than that of spectroscopic solutions in the radio-loud and gamma-ray-loud parent samples, suggesting corrections may be needed for the luminosity function and evolution of these sources. We describe several follow-up projects and compare our redshift constraints for specific objects with those recently obtained via alternative means, finding good agreement.

Type of resource	text
Date created	2010

Author	Meisner, Aaron
Primary advisor	Romani, Roger W.
Advisor	Blandford, Roger
Department	Stanford University, Department of Physics

Related Publication	Aaron M. Meisner and Roger W. Romani, Imaging Redshift Estimates for BL Lacertae Objects, 2010 ApJ 712 14 doi:10.1088/0004-637X/712/1/14
Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/th926tb9400

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred Citation: Meisner, Aaron (2010). Imaging redshift estimates for BL Lacertae objects. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at http://purl.stanford.edu/th926tb9400.

Undergraduate Theses, Department of Physics

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