Identifying the 3FHL Catalog. III. Results of the CTIO-COSMOS Optical Spectroscopy Campaign

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with their relativistic jets pointed toward the observer form a subclass of luminous γ-ray sources commonly known as blazars. The study of blazars is essential to improve our understanding of the AGNs emission mechanisms and evolution, as well as to map the extragalactic background light. To do so, however, one needs to classify and measure a redshift for a large sample of these sources correctly. The Third Fermi-LAT Catalog of High-Energy Sources (3FHL) contains 1160 blazars reported at energies greater than 10 GeV. However, ∼25% of these sources are unclassified and ∼50% lack redshift information. To increase the spectral completeness of the 3FHL catalog, we are working on an optical spectroscopic follow-up campaign using 4 m and 8 m telescopes. In this paper, we present the results of the second part of this campaign, where we observed 23 blazars using the 4 m telescope at Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile. We report that all the 23 sources are classified as BL Lacs, a confirmed redshift measurement for three sources, a redshift lower limit for two sources, and a tentative redshift measurement for three sources.