We present ELDAR, a new method that exploits the potential of medium- and narrow-band filter surveys to securely identify active galactic nuclei (AGN) and determine their redshifts. Our methodology improves on traditional approaches by looking for AGN emission lines expected to be identified against the continuum, thanks to the width of the filters. To assess its performance, we apply ELDAR to the data of the ALHAMBRA survey, which covered an effective area of 2.38deg^2^ with 20 contiguous medium-band optical filters down to F814W=24.5. Using two different configurations of ELDAR in which we require the detection of at least 2 and 3 emission lines, respectively, we extract two catalogues of type-I AGN. The first is composed of 585 sources (79% of them spectroscopically-unknown) down to F814W=22.5 at z_phot_>1, which corresponds to a surface density of 209 deg-2. In the second, the 494 selected sources (83% of them spectroscopically-unknown) reach F814W=23 at z_phot_>1.5, for a corresponding number density of 176deg^-2^. Then, using samples of spectroscopically-known AGN in the ALHAMBRA fields, for the two catalogues we estimate a completeness of 73% and 67%, and a redshift precision of 1.01% and 0.86% (with outliers fractions of 8.1% and 5.8%). At z>2, where our selection performs best, we reach 85% and 77% completeness and we find no contamination from galaxies.
Cone search capability for table J/MNRAS/472/2085/alh2l (ALH2L catalogue)
Cone search capability for table J/MNRAS/472/2085/alh3l (ALH3L catalogue)
