Constraints on the very high energy emission from BL Lacertae objects

We present results from observations of 29 BL Lacertae objects, taken with the Whipple Observatory 10 m Gamma-Ray Telescope between 1995 and 2000. The observed objects are mostly at low redshift (z < 0.2) but observations of objects of z up to 0.444 are also reported. Five of the objects are EGRET sources and two are unconfirmed TeV sources. Three of the confirmed sources of extragalactic TeV gamma rays were originally observed as part of this survey and have been reported elsewhere. No significant excesses are detected from any of the other objects observed, on time scales of days, months or years. We report 99.9% confidence level flux upper limits for the objects for each observing season. The flux upper limits are typically 20% of the Crab flux although, for some sources, limits as sensitive as 6% of the Crab flux were derived. The results are consistent with the synchrotron-self-Compton (SSC) model predictions considered in this work.
30 pages, 9 Tables, 3 Figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal, 1 March 2003 edition Version 2 contains four corrections to the flux units (Tables 5, 6, 7 and 9) and two corrections to upper limits in the flux units column for H1426+428 in Table 6