BIB-VERSION:: AST-PP-v1.0 ID:: epreps.stsci//prep1213 ENTRY:: March 9, 1998 TITLE:: The Deep X-Ray Radio Blazar Survey (DXRBS) I. Methods and First Results SUBTITLE:: AUTHOR:: Perlman, Eric S. (1,2,3) AUTHOR:: Padovani, Paolo (4,5,6) AUTHOR:: Giommi, Paolo (5,7) AUTHOR:: Sambruna, Rita (2,8,9) AUTHOR:: Jones, Laurence R. (10) AUTHOR:: Tzioumis, Anastasios (11) AUTHOR:: Reynolds, John (11) AFFIL:: (1) Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA AFFIL:: (2) Visiting astronomer at Kitt Peak National Observatory AFFIL:: (3) Visiting astronomer at Cerro Tololo Intraamerican Observatory AFFIL:: (4) Dipartimento di Fisica, II Università di Roma "Tor Vergata", Via della Ricerca Scientifica 1, I-00133 Roma, Italy AFFIL:: (5) Visiting astronomer at the European Southern Observatory, La Silla, Chile AFFIL:: (6) Currently on leave at Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA AFFIL:: (7) SAX Science Data Center, ASI, Viale Regina Margherita 202 I-00198, Italy AFFIL:: (8) Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics, Mail Code 660.2 Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA AFFIL:: (9) Presently at: Pennsylvania State University, Department of Astronomy, 525 Davey Lab, University Park, PA 16803, USA AFFIL:: (10) School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK AFFIL:: (11) Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO, PO Box 76, Epping NSW 2121, Australia DATE:: February 1998 JOURNAL:: To appear in: The Astronomical Journal SUBMITTED:: 4 August 1997 ACCEPTED:: 23 December 1997 OTHER_ACCESS:: COPYRIGHT:: Copyright 1998 The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. All Rights Reserved. LANGUAGE:: English ABSTRACT:: We have undertaken a survey of archived, pointed ROSAT PSPC data for blazars by correlating the ROSAT WGACAT database with several publicly available radio catalogs, restricting our candidate list to serendipitous flat radio spectrum sources (alphar <= 0.70, where Snu propto  nu-alpha). Here we discuss our survey methods, identification procedure and first results. Our survey is found to be ~95% efficient at finding flat-spectrum radio-loud quasars (FSRWs, 59 of our first 85 IDs) and BL Lacartae objects (22 of our first 85 IDs), a figure which is comparable to or greater that that achieved by other radio and X-ray survey techniques.

The identifications presented here show that all previous samples of blazars (even when taken together) did not representatively survey the blazar population, missing critical regions of (LX, LR) parameter space within which large fractions of the blazar population lie. Particularly important is the identification of a large population of FSRQs (>~ 25% of DXRBS FSRQs) with ratios of X-ray to radio luminosity >~ 10-6 (alpharx <~ 0.78). In addition, due to our greater sensitivity, DXRBS has already more than doubled the number of FSRQs in complete samples with 5 GHz (radio) luminosities between 1031.5 and 1033.5 erg s-1 Hz-1 and fills in the region of parameter space between X-ray selected and radio-selected samples of BL Lacs. DXRBS is the very first sample to contain statistically significant numbers of blazars at low luminosities, approaching what should be the lower end of the FSRQ luminosity function. END:: epreps.stsci//prep1213