Lost and Found - A gallery of overlooked optical nuclear transients from the ZTF archive
E. Quintin, E. Russeil, M. Llamas Lanza, S. Karpov, E. E. O. Ishida, J. Peloton, M. V. Pruzhinskaya, A. M\"oller, M. Giustini, G. Miniutti, R.S. Saxton, P. S\'anchez-S\'aez, S. Zheltoukhov, A. Dodin, and A. Belinski

TL;DR
This paper reports on the discovery and analysis of 19 optical nuclear transients, including new TDE candidates, using an early detection system applied to the ZTF archive, highlighting the importance of archival searches and future improvements.
Contribution
The study introduces a new detection system for TDEs in ZTF data and provides a comprehensive analysis of overlooked nuclear transients, including new candidates and insights into their host galaxy activity.
Findings
19 optical nuclear transients identified
2 new repeated TDE candidates discovered
1 exceptionally long-lived transient in passive galaxy
Abstract
Tidal disruption events (TDEs) correspond to the destruction of a star by the tidal forces around a black hole, leading to outbursts which can last from months to years. These transients are rare, and increasing the current sample is paramount to understand them. As part of the Fink alert broker, we have developed an early detection system for TDEs for the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) data. In this paper, we report on the optical transients we found either during the development of this tool, or when applying the classifier to the existing archive. We use this sample to anticipate what improvements to the TDE detection systems will need to be implemented for future surveys. For all the transients, we present optical and infrared archival photometry from ZTF, WISE, and Catalina, and assess the previous nuclear activity of the host. We fit the ZTF lightcurves with both a…
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Taxonomy
TopicsGamma-ray bursts and supernovae · Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution · Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena
