The RGB Sample of Intermediate BL Lacs

Abstract

Combining newly identified and previously known BL Lacs from the RASS-Green Bank (RGB) catalog, we present a sample of 127 BL Lacs, the largest ever derived from a single uniform survey. A Complete sample of 33 objects brighter than O=18.0 mag is also presented. These samples are compared to other known BL Lac samples and are generally found to exhibit properties intermediate between those of the previously disparate classes of High and Low energy peaked BL Lacs (HBLs and LBLs, respectively). This result is most dramatic in the distribution of the X-ray to radio logarithmic flux ratios, where the RGB BL Lacs are shown to peak precisely where the sharp dichotomy between the two subclasses was previously seen. The alpha_ro vs alpha_ox diagram also shows the RGB sample smoothly bridges the gap between the previously distinct subclasses of LBLs and HBLs. We also find a weak, but statistically significant correlation between the composite X-ray spectral index alpha_xox and alpha_ro. This implies that the more LBL-like RGB BL Lacs have a secondary source of X-ray emission, possibly from an inverse Compton component. We also present both the X-ray and radio logN-logS distributions for which the competing HBL/LBL unification scenarios have differing predictions. The unknown effects of the triple flux limit inherent in the RGB Complete sample makes quantitative analysis uncertain, but the characteristics of the RGB sample compare well both with results obtained from previous samples and with general theoretical predictions based on a simple Monte Carlo simulation. Our analysis indicates that the unimodal distribution of BL Lac properties found in the RGB sample likely reliably reflect the underlying population, while the bimodal distribution found in earlier studies arose primarily from observational selection effects.