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Abstract: We present results from a systematic selection of tidal disruption events (TDEs) in a wide area (4800 deg2 ) g + R band experiment by the Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF) with a rolling cadence of 1 and 3 days. We use photometric selection criteria to down select from a total of 493 nuclear transients detected during the experiment to a sample of 26 blue (g − r < 0 mag) nuclear transients in red host galaxies. Using Swift follow-up UV and X-ray imaging, and ground-based optical spectroscopy, we classify 14 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), 9 highly variable active galactic nuclei (AGNs), 2 confirmed TDEs, and 1 potential core-collapse supernova. From our study, we measure a TDE per galaxy rate of 1.7 +2.85 −1.27 ×10−4 gal−1 yr−1 (90% CL in Poisson statistics) using a galaxy number density estimated from the SDSS luminosity function. We find that it is possible to filter out AGNs by employing a more stringent transient color cut (g − r < −0.2 mag). The UV is an important discriminator for filtering out SN contamination, since in the optical, SNe Ia can appear as blue as TDEs in their early phases. However, the contamination from SN Ia drops significantly with a more stringent spatial offset cut, suggesting higher precision in astrometry is essential for separating TDEs from SNe Ia in the optical. Our most stringent optical photometric selection criteria yields a contamination rate of 4.5:1, allowing for a manageable number of TDE candidates for complete spectroscopic follow-up and real-time classification in the ZTF era.
Found in: osebi
Keywords: accretion, accretion disks – black hole physics – galaxies: nuclei – ultraviolet: general
Published: 02.03.2022; Views: 761; Downloads: 44
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