Exploring TeV candidates of Fermi blazars through machine learning

Abstract

In this work, we make use of a supervised machine learning algorithm based on Logistic Regression (LR) to select TeV blazar candidates from the 4FGL-DR2 / 4LAC-DR2, 3FHL, 3HSP, and 2BIGB catalogs. LR constructs a hyperplane based on a selection of optimal parameters, named features, and hyper-parameters whose values control the learning process and determine the values of features that a learning algorithm ends up learning, to discriminate TeV blazars from non-TeV blazars. In addition, it gives the probability (or logistic) that a source may be considered as a TeV blazar candidate. Non-TeV blazars with logistics greater than 80% are considered high-confidence TeV candidates. Using this technique, we identify 40 high-confidence TeV candidates from the 4FGL-DR2 / 4LAC-DR2 blazars and we build the feature hyper-plane to distinguish TeV and non-TeV blazars. We also calculate the hyper-planes for the 3FHL, 3HSP, and 2BIGB. Finally, we construct the broadband spectral energy distributions (SED) for the 40 candidates, testing for their detectability with various instruments. We find that 7 of them are likely to be detected by existing or upcoming IACT observatories, while 1 could be observed with EAS particle detector arrays.