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Description
Blazars constitute the most enigmatic class of extragalactic {gamma}-ray sources, and their observational features have been ascribed to a relativistic jet closely aligned to the line of sight. They are generally divided in two main classes: the BL Lac objects (BL Lacs) and the flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs). In the case of BL Lacs the double-bumped spectral energy distribution (SED) is generally described by the synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) emission, while for the FSRQs it is interpreted as due to external Compton (EC) emission. Recently, we showed that in the [3.4]-[4.6]-[12]{mu}m color-color diagram the blazar population covers a distinct region (i.e., the WISE blazar Strip (WBS)) clearly separated from the other extragalactic sources that are dominated by thermal emission. In this paper, we investigate the relation between the infrared and {gamma}-ray emission for a subset of confirmed blazars from the literature, associated with Fermi sources, for which WISE archival observations are available. This sample is a proper subset of the sample of sources used previously, and the availability of Fermi data is critical to constrain the models on the emission mechanisms for the blazars.
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