Polarimetry of optically selected BL Lac candidates from the SDSS

Abstract

We present and discuss polarimetric observations of 182 targets drawn from an optically selected sample of 240 probable BL Lac candidates out of the SDSS compiled by Collinge et al. (2005). In contrast to most other BL Lac candidate samples extracted from the SDSS, its radio- and/or X-ray properties have not been taken into account for its derivation. Thus, because its selection is based on optical properties alone, it may be less prone to selection effects inherent in other samples derived at different frequencies, so it offers a unique opportunity to extract the first unbiased BL Lac luminosity function that is suitably large in size. We found 124 out of 182 targets (68%) to be polarized, 95 of the polarized targets (77%) to be highly polarized (> 4%). The low-frequency peaked BL Lac candidates in the sample are on average only slightly more polarized than the high-frequency peaked ones. Compared to earlier studies, we found a high duty cycle in high polarization (~66 +2/-14% to be > 4% polarized) in high-frequency peaked BL Lac candidates. This may come from our polarization analysis, which minimizes the contamination by host galaxy light. No evidence of radio-quiet BL Lac objects in the sample was found. Our observations show that the probable sample of BL Lac candidates of Collinge et al. (2005) indeed contains a large number of bona fide BL Lac objects. High S/N spectroscopy and deep X-ray observations are required to construct the first luminosity function of optically selected BL Lac objects and to test more stringently for any radio-quiet BL Lac objects in the sample.