RAPIDLY EVOLVING AND LUMINOUS TRANSIENTS FROM PAN-STARRS1

By M. Drout, Ryan Chornock, A. Soderberg, N. Sanders, R. McKinnon, Armin Rest, R. Foley, D. Milisavljevic, Raffaella Margutti, E. Berger and 26 more. 2014

174 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In the past decade, several rapidly evolving transients have been discovered whose timescales and luminosities are not easily explained by traditional supernovae (SNe) models. The sample size of these objects has remained small due, at least in part, to the challenges of detecting short timescale transients with traditional survey cadences. Here we present the results from a search within the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey (PS1-MDS) for rapidly evolving and luminous transients. We identify 10 new transients with a time above half-maximum (t1/2) of less than 12 days and −16.5 > M > −20 mag. This increases the number of known events in this region of SN phase space by roughly a factor of three. The median redshift of the PS1-MDS sample is z = 0.275 and they all exploded in star-forming galaxies. In general, the transients possess faster rise than decline timescale and blue colors at maximum light (gP1 − rP1 ≲ −0.2). Best-fit blackbodies reveal photospheric temperatures/radii that expand/cool with time and explosion spectra taken near maximum light are dominated by a blue continuum, consistent with a hot, optically thick, ejecta. We find it difficult to reconcile the short timescale, high peak luminosity (L > 1043 erg s−1), and lack of UV line blanketing observed in many of these transients with an explosion powered mainly by the radioactive decay of 56Ni. Rather, we find that many are consistent with either (1) cooling envelope emission from the explosion of a star with a low-mass extended envelope that ejected very little (<0.03 M☉) radioactive material, or (2) a shock breakout within a dense, optically thick, wind surrounding the progenitor star. After calculating the detection efficiency for objects with rapid timescales in the PS1-MDS we find a volumetric rate of 4800–8000 events yr−1 Gpc−3 (4%–7% of the core-collapse SN rate at z = 0.2).

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6c2fc6333469f0310b03e1054b8ba47b1a411979

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

The Discovery of the Electromagnetic Counterpart of GW170817: Kilonova AT 2017gfo/DLT17ck (2017, methodology): “1 Berger et al. 2013), which were based on hypothetical parameters for the BNS optical light curve, and are comparable to the volumetric rate of fast optical transients, ´ - - -–4.8 8.0 10 Mpc yr6 3 1, found by Drout et al. (2014).”
Ultra-stripped supernovae: progenitors and fate (2015, background): “Drout et al.(2014) have estimated the rate of rapid transients (whose luminosity decreases by at least 50 per cent in 12 days) to be 4–8 per cent of the core-collapse rate (at a redshiftz = 0.2).”
Millisecond Magnetar Birth Connects FRB 121102 to Superluminous Supernovae and Long-duration Gamma-Ray Bursts (2017, background): “However, we note that the host galaxy properties of the ultra-fast stripped SNe, such as their location in the mass-metallicity plane consistent with that comprising the bulk of star-forming galaxies, do not match those of the hosts of FRB 121102 or LGRBs/SLSNe-I (Drout et al. 2013, 2014), thus disf”
Observational and Physical Classification of Supernovae (2016, unknown): “Drout et al. (2014) presented a group of rapidly-declining events from the PS1 survey, with light curve properties similar to those of the rapidly-declining SNe Ib/c mentioned above, but spectroscopically, observations are lacking to determine whether the PS1 events are SNe Ib/c or rather…”
The Cow: Discovery of a Luminous, Hot, and Rapidly Evolving Transient (2018, background): “Models such as shock-breakout or recombination in an extended envelope that have been put forward for other fast and luminous events (e.g, Drout et al. 2014).”
The fast, luminous ultraviolet transient AT2018cow: extreme supernova, or disruption of a star by an intermediate-mass black hole? (2018, methodology): “The most convincing matches by far are the luminous members of the PS1 sample from Drout et al. (2014): PS111qr and PS1-12bv, shown at bottom right.”
Bolometric light curves and explosion parameters of 38 stripped-envelope core-collapse supernovae (2014, background): “Despite this, rapidly fading SNe such as, e.g. SN 2005ek (Drout et al. 2013, see also Drout et al. 2014) may represent very low Mej systems, which observationally are SE SNe, indicating hydrogen-deficient explosions can occur within the lower mass range; modelling of ‘ultrastripped’ cores producing…”
An Embedded X-Ray Source Shines through the Aspherical AT 2018cow: Revealing the Inner Workings of the Most Luminous Fast-evolving Optical Transients (2018, methodology): “Shock breakout scenarios have been invoked to explain some fast-rising optical transients (e.g., Ofek et al. 2010; Drout et al. 2014; Arcavi et al. 2016; Shivvers et al. 2016; Tanaka et al. 2016).”