Radio Follow-up on All Unassociated Gamma-Ray Sources from the Third Fermi Large Area Telescope Source Catalog

Abstract

The third Fermi Large Area Telescope γ-ray source catalog (3FGL) contains over 1000 objects for which there is no known counterpart at other wavelengths. The physical origin of the γ-ray emission from those objects is unknown. Such objects are commonly referred to as unassociated and mostly do not exhibit significant γ-ray flux variability. We performed a survey of all unassociated γ-ray sources found in 3FGL using the Australia Telescope Compact Array and Very Large Array in the range 4.0-10.0 GHz. We found 2097 radio candidates for association with γ-ray sources. The follow-up with very long baseline interferometry for a subset of those candidates yielded 142 new associations with active galactic nuclei that are γ-ray sources, provided alternative associations for seven objects, and improved positions for another 144 known associations to the milliarcsecond level of accuracy. In addition, for 245 unassociated γ-ray sources we did not find a single compact radio source above 2 mJy within 3σ of their γ-ray localization. A significant fraction of these empty fields, 39%, are located away from the Galactic plane. We also found 36 extended radio sources that are candidates for association with a corresponding γ-ray object, 19 of which are most likely supernova remnants or H II regions, whereas 17 could be radio galaxies.