A figure of merit for blazar-like source identification in the gamma-ray energy band

The microwave to gamma-ray slope αμγ can be used as a viable figure of merit for blazar-like source identification in gamma-rays. Taking into account the constraints from the observed extragalactic gamma-ray background, one can estimate the maximum duty cycle allowed for a selected sample of low energy peaked (LBL) blazars, in order to be detectable for the nominal sensitivity values of AGILE and GLAST gamma-ray experiments. This work is based on the results of a recently derived blazar radio LogN-LogS obtained by combining several multi-frequency surveys. We present our estimates of duty cycle constraints applied on a sample composed by 146 high latitude and 74 medium latitude LBL blazars from the new WMAP3 yr catalog. Our results can be used as an indicator to identify good gamma-ray blazar candidates: sources with high values of duty cycle can in principle be detectable also in a ``steady'' state by AGILE and GLAST without over-predicting the extragalactic background.