SIMBAD references

Very high-energy (VHE; >100 GeV) γ-ray emission originates via some of the most extreme particle acceleration processes in the Universe. Considering beamed active galactic nuclei, i.e., blazars, only a small fraction, mainly high-synchrotron-peaked BL Lacertae (BL Lac) objects, have been detected in the VHE band with ground-based Cherenkov telescopes. We utilized ∼16 yr of Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) observations in the 0.1-2 TeV energy range to systematically search for potential VHE emitters in a sample of high-synchrotron-peaked (${\nu }_{{\rm{syn}}}^{{\rm{peak}}}\gt 1{0}^{15}$ Hz) BL Lac sources. We identified, for the first time, 92 VHE-emitting blazars at a ≥5σ confidence level. A significant VHE emission was also detected from 52 sources previously reported as VHE blazars. Comparing with the general blazar population, these VHE-emitting blazars are found to be located at low redshifts (mean z = 0.2 ± 0.1) and exhibit bright synchrotron emission (${\mathrm{log}}{F}_{{\rm{syn}}}^{{\rm{peak}}}=-11.2\pm 0.4$, in erg cm^–2 s^–1). We also investigated the coincidence of VHE photon arrivals with the source activity states and found that Fermi-LAT has detected VHE photons during both quiescent and elevated activity epochs. These VHE-emitting blazars represent promising targets for current and next-generation ground-based Cherenkov telescopes, and provide powerful laboratories for probing particle acceleration in relativistic jets, testing multimessenger connections, and constraining extragalactic background light models.