Paper detail

Extreme BL Lacs: probes for cosmology and UHECR candidates

High-energy observations of extreme BL Lac objects, such as 1ES0229+200 or 1ES 0347-121, recently focused interest both for blazar and jet physics and for the implication on the extragalactic background light and intergalactic magnetic field estimate. Moreover, their enigmatic properties have been interpreted in a scenario in which their primary high- energy output is through a beam of high-energy hadrons. However, despite their possible important role in all these topics, the number of these extreme highly peaked BL Lac objects (EHBL) is still rather small. Aiming at increase their number, we selected a group of EHBL candidates considering those undetected (or only barely detected) by the LAT onboard Fermi and characterized by a high X-ray versus radio flux ratio. We assembled the multi-wavelength spectral energy distribution of the resulting 9 sources, using available archival data of Swift, GALEX, and Fermi satellites, confirming their nature. Through a simple one-zone synchrotron self-Compton model we estimate the expected very high energy flux, finding that in the majority of cases it is within the reach of present generation of Cherenkov arrays or of the forthcoming CTA.