A catalog of over ten million variable source candidates in ZTF data release 1

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive catalog of over ten million variable source candidates from ZTF Data Release 1, including periodicity analysis, classification, and new candidate discoveries, accessible online for further research.

Contribution

The paper introduces a large-scale catalog of variable sources with detailed variability indicators and periodicity analysis, including new short-period and dwarf nova candidates, expanding the available data for astrophysical studies.

Findings

Over ten million variable source candidates identified.

New short-period (<90 min) variable candidates discovered.

Approximately 60 new dwarf nova candidates found.

Abstract

Variable sources probe a wide range of astrophysical phenomena. We present a catalog of over ten million variable source candidates found in Data Release 1 (DR1) of the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). We perform a periodicity search up to a frequency of 160 day^-1, and we classify the light curves into erratic and smooth variables. We also present variability indicators and the results of a periodicity search, up to a frequency of 5 day^-1, for about 1 billion sources in the ZTF-DR1 light curve database. We present several new short-period (<90 min) candidates, and about 60 new dwarf nova candidates, including two candidate eclipsing systems. Both the 10 million variables catalog and ~1 billion source catalog are available online in catsHTM format.