Needle in a Haystack: Finding Supermassive Black Hole-Related Flares in the Zwicky Transient Facility Public Survey
Yael Dgany, Iair Arcavi, Lydia Makrygianni, Craig Pellegrino, D., Andrew Howell

TL;DR
This paper presents a systematic real-time search for supermassive black hole-related transients in ZTF data, identifying various types of flares and assessing the effectiveness of different search strategies in wide-field surveys.
Contribution
It introduces a novel method for detecting SMBH-related transients in ZTF data and evaluates the efficiency of different search criteria and galaxy types for finding TDEs and other flares.
Findings
5 TDEs identified out of 345 events
Limiting to blue events doubles TDE detection rate
Host galaxy offset is not a strong discriminant
Abstract
Transient accretion events onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs), such as tidal disruption events (TDEs), Bowen Fluorescence Flares (BFFs), and active galactic nuclei (AGNs), which are accompanied by sudden increases of activity, offer a new window onto the SMBH population, accretion physics, and stellar dynamics in galaxy centers. However, such transients are rare and finding them in wide-field transient surveys is challenging. Here we present the results of a systematic real-time search for SMBH-related transients in Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) public alerts, using various search queries. We examined 345 rising events coincident with a galaxy nucleus, with no history of previous activity, of which 223 were spectroscopically classified. Of those, five (2.2%) were TDEs, one (0.5%) was a BFF, and two (0.9%) were AGN flares. Limiting the search to blue events, the fraction of TDEs…
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Taxonomy
TopicsStatistics Education and Methodologies · Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena · Astronomical Observations and Instrumentation
