J/ApJ/955/144 LCs of 9 rapidly evolving transients (Li+, 2023)
Rapidly evolving transients in archival ZTF public alerts.
Li W., Arcavi I., Nakar E., Filippenko A.V., Brink T.G., Zheng W.,
Yang Yi, Lam M.C., Keinan I., Brennan S.J., Shitrit N.
<Astrophys. J., 955, 144 (2023)>
=2023ApJ...955..144L 2023ApJ...955..144L
ADC_Keywords: Transient; Photometry; Optical
Keywords: High energy astrophysics ; Supernovae ; Transient sources ;
Time domain astronomy
Abstract:
We search the archival Zwicky Transient Facility public survey for
rapidly evolving transient (RET) candidates based on well-defined
criteria between 2018 May and 2021 December. The search yielded
19 bona fide RET candidates, corresponding to a discovery rate of
∼5.2 events per year. Even with a Galactic latitude cut of 20°,
eight of the 19 events (∼42%) are Galactic, including one with a
light-curve shape closely resembling that of the GW170817 kilonova
(KN). An additional event is a nova in M31. Four out of the 19 events
(∼21%) are confirmed extragalactic RETs (one confirmed here for the
first time) and the origin of six additional events cannot be
determined. We did not find any extragalactic events resembling the
GW170817 KN, from which we obtain an upper limit on the volumetric
rate of GW170817-like KNe of R≤2400Gpc-3/yr (95% confidence). These
results can be used for quantifying contaminants to RET searches in
transient alert streams, specifically when searching for KNe
independently of gravitational-wave and gamma-ray-burst triggers.
Description:
Here we perform an independent archival search for unreported
kilonovae (KNe) and other rapidly evolving transients (RETs) in Phases
I and II of the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) public "Northern Sky
Survey".
We query the ZTF public alert stream between 2018 May 4 and 2021
December 18 using the criteria detailed in Section 2.
A total of 730 candidates passed the selection criteria. We examined
all of them by eye and found that most have erratic light curves,
indicating they are likely subtraction artifacts. We remove these
events and are left with 60 candidates with coherent light curves.
For these candidates, we request forced photometry through the public
ZTF forced-photometry service (g and r bands), the Asteroid
Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) forced-photometry service
(o and c bands), and the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae
(ASAS-SN) forced-photometry service (g band) at the median coordinates
of each candidate. After the cuts detailed in Section 3, a total of
19 candidates remain; their information is listed in Table 1.
We further exclude 10 events with Transient Name Server (TNS)
classifications. The light curves of the remaining nine unclassified
candidates are presented in Figure 1 and are discussed in the paper.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ReadMe 80 . This file
table1.dat 85 19 Rapidly evolving transient (RET) candidates that
passed our selection criteria
fig1.dat 51 696 Light curves of our 9 rapidly evolving transient
(RET) candidates
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See also:
V/147 : The SDSS Photometric Catalogue, Release 12 (Alam+, 2015)
V/154 : Sloan Digital Sky Surveys (SDSS), Release 16 (DR16) (Ahumada+, 2020)
I/355 : Gaia DR3 Part 1. Main source (Gaia Collaboration, 2022)
I/357 : Gaia DR3 Part 3. Non-single stars (Gaia Collaboration, 2022)
I/358 : Gaia DR3 Part 4. Variability (Gaia Collaboration, 2022)
VII/281 : GLADE v2.3 catalog (Dalya+, 2018)
J/ApJ/696/870 : Catalina Real-time Transient Survey (CRTS) (Drake+, 2009)
J/AJ/140/34 : Classification of nova light curves (Strope+, 2010)
J/A+A/514/A102 : SDSS DR7 groups of galaxies (Tago+, 2010)
J/ApJ/741/97 : Light curves of Ibc supernovae (Drout+, 2011)
J/ApJ/794/23 : Pan-STARRS1 transients optical photometry (Drout+, 2014)
J/ApJ/788/48 : X-ray through NIR photometry of NGC 2617 (Shappee+, 2014)
J/ApJ/819/35 : LCs of four transients from PTF & SNLS (Arcavi+, 2016)
J/MNRAS/456/4441 : Outburst catalog of cataclysmic variables (Coppejans+, 2016)
J/A+A/593/A68 : PTF12os & iPTF13bvn spectra & light curves (Fremling+, 2016)
J/ApJ/848/L29 : Opt. follow-up of GW170817 counterpart (Diaz+, 2017)
J/ApJ/851/107 : iPTF 16asu photometry follow-up (Whitesides+, 2017)
J/MNRAS/481/894 : Rapidly evolving transients in the DES (Pursiainen+, 2018)
J/ApJ/904/155 : gri photometry for 32 kilonovae with ZTF (Andreoni+, 2020)
J/ApJ/895/32 : Zwicky Transient Facility BTS. I. (Fremling+, 2020)
J/MNRAS/498/2575 : Rapidly evolving transients from DES (Wiseman+, 2020)
J/ApJ/918/63 : Fast-transients confirmed by ZTFReST & LCs (Andreoni+, 2021)
J/ApJ/910/42 : LCs and spectroscopic obs. of AT2018cow (Xiang+, 2021)
J/ApJ/949/120 : Extragalactic fast blue opt. transients from ZTF (Ho+, 2023)
http://www.wis-tns.org/ : Transient Name Server (TNS) homepage
http://www.ztf.caltech.edu/ztf-public-releases.html : ZTF Public DR homepage
Byte-by-byte Description of file: table1.dat
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- 5 A5 --- Cl? TNS classification available or "Uncl"
7- 18 A12 --- Name Transient name
20- 30 A11 --- OName1 Other name
32- 42 A11 --- OName2 A second other name if any
44- 52 F9.5 deg RAdeg [10.7/342.1] Right ascension (J2000)
54- 62 F9.5 deg DEdeg [-18.4/75.4] Declination (J2000)
64- 68 F5.1 deg GLAT [-75/61.1] Galactic latitude
70- 82 A13 --- Class Object classification
84- 85 I2 --- Ref [1/19] Reference (1)
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Note (1): Reference as follows:
1 = This work;
2 = this work; Hodgkin et al. (2019TNSTR1270....1H 2019TNSTR1270....1H);
3 = this work; Nordin et al. (2019TNSTR1202....1N 2019TNSTR1202....1N);
4 = this work; Nordin et al. (2019TNSTR2579....1N 2019TNSTR2579....1N);
5 = this work; Fremling (2020TNSTR.598....1F 2020TNSTR.598....1F);
6 = this work; Nordin et al. (2020TNSTR1797....1N 2020TNSTR1797....1N);
7 = this work; Forster et al. (2020TNSTR2075....1F 2020TNSTR2075....1F);
8 = this work; Nordin et al. (2020TNSTR2113....1N 2020TNSTR2113....1N);
9 = this work;
10 = Fremling et al. (2018TNSCR2146....1F 2018TNSCR2146....1F);
Gromadzki et al. (2018TNSCR1339....1G 2018TNSCR1339....1G);
11 = Fremling et al. (2018TNSCR1404....1F 2018TNSCR1404....1F);
12 = Wevers et al. (2018TNSCR1397....1W 2018TNSCR1397....1W);
13 = Dahiwale & Fremling (2019TNSCR2407....1D 2019TNSCR2407....1D);
Ho et al. (2023ApJ...949..120H 2023ApJ...949..120H);
14 = Dahiwale & Fremling (2020TNSCR2139....1D 2020TNSCR2139....1D);
15 = Diaz et al. (2020TNSCR3836....1D 2020TNSCR3836....1D);
16 = Gal-Yam et al. (2021TNSAN..76....1G 2021TNSAN..76....1G);
Pastorello et al. (2021TNSAN..71....1P 2021TNSAN..71....1P & 2021TNSCR.511....1P 2021TNSCR.511....1P);
17 = Do (2021TNSCR2033....1D 2021TNSCR2033....1D);
18 = Coppejans et al. (2016, J/MNRAS/456/4441);
19 = Payne (2021TNSCR3242....1P 2021TNSCR3242....1P).
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Byte-by-byte Description of file: fig1.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- 12 A12 --- Name Transient name
14- 23 F10.4 d MJD [58422.5/59374.5] Modified Julian Date of
observation (JD-2400000.5)
25- 30 F6.3 mag mag [14/21.8] Apparent AB magnitude in Filter
32- 36 F5.3 mag e_mag [0.005/0.4]? Uncertainty in mag
38 A1 --- Filt Filter (c, o, g, or r)
40- 45 A6 --- Source Source (1)
47- 51 A5 --- l_mag [FALSE/TRUE ] Is "mag" column a 3σ
upper limit?
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Note (1): Source as follows:
ZTF = the Zwicky Transient Facility (518 occurrences)
http://www.ztf.caltech.edu/
ATLAS = the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (145 occurrences)
http://fallingstar-data.com/forcedphot/
ASASSN = the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (33 occurrences)
http://asas-sn.osu.edu/
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History:
From electronic version of the journal
(End) Prepared by [AAS], Emmanuelle Perret [CDS] 03-Dec-2025