One of the main scientific objectives of the recent Fermi mission is
unveiling the nature of the unidentified gamma-ray sources (UGSs).
Despite the large improvements of Fermi in the gamma-ray source
localization with respect to the past gamma-ray missions,
about 1/3 of the gamma-ray objects detected still do not have a
low energy counterpart associated.
Recently, we discovered that blazars, the rarest and the most
gamma-ray detected class of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs),
can be recognized and separated from other extragalactic sources
dominated by thermal emission using the IR colors.
I will present how the WISE infrared data make possible to
identify a distinct region of the IR color-color diagrams
where the sources dominated by the thermal radiation
are separated from those dominated by non-thermal emission, in particular the blazar population.
This IR non-thermal region of the parameter space, so called WISE Blazar Strip (WBS),
it is a powerful new diagnostic tool that can be used to extract new blazar candidates,
to identify those of uncertain type and also to search for the
blazar-like counterparts of unidentified gamma-ray sources.
First, I will show the relation between the infrared and gamma-ray
emission for a selected sample of blazars
associated with Fermi sources, for which WISE archival
observations are available.
Then, for the first time, I will present a possible
candidate counterpart for 184 out of 313 sources analyzed.
This page is maintained by Rob Simcoe