Modelling the Multifrequency SED of AGN Candidates among the Unidentied EGRET and Fermi Gamma-Ray Sources

Abstract

Of the 271 sources in the 3rd EGRET catalogue, 131 were reported as unidentied, i.e. not associated with any particular class of point source in the sky. Since the largest fraction of the EGRET sources were extragalactic, a sample of 13 extragalactic unidentied sources have been selected for multi-wavelength follow-up studies. Five of the selected EGRET sources coincide with gamma-ray flux enhancements seen in the Fermi-LAT data after one year of operation. In this article, we report the multi-wavelength properties of, among others, the 5 sources detected by Fermi-LAT from our sample of high galactic latitude unidentied EGRET sources. Recent spectroscopic observations with the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) conrmed one of the unidentied EGRET sources as a possible Seyfert 2 galaxy, or alternatively, a narrow line radio galaxy. The detected gamma-ray emission (Eγ > 30 MeV) of the 5 coinciding EGRET/Fermi-LAT sources are tted with external Compton and Synchrotron Self Compton (SSC) models to investigate the energetics required to produce the EGRET/Fermi gamma-ray flux. In all the models the inclination angle of the jet with respect to the observer is jet 60, between those of Seyfert 1 and Seyfert 2/radio galaxies. These results confirm the possibility of Seyfert and radio galaxies sources are constituting a new class of gamma-ray source in the energy range Eγ > 30 MeV.