Orbital Foregrounds for Ultra-Short Duration Transients
Hank Corbett, Nicholas M. Law, Alan Vasquez Soto, Ward S. Howard, Amy Glazier, Ramses Gonzalez, Jeffrey K. Ratzloff, Nathan Galliher, Octavi Fors, Robert Quimby
Reflections from objects in Earth orbit can produce sub-second, star-like optical flashes similar to astrophysical transients. Reflections have historically caused false alarms for transient surveys, but the population has not been systematically studied. We report event rates for these orbital flashes using the Evryscope Fast Transient Engine, a low-latency transient detection pipeline for the Evryscopes. We select single-epoch detections likely caused by Earth satellites and model the event rate as a function of both magnitude and sky position. We measure a rate of $1800^{+600}_{-280}$ sky$^{-1}$ hour$^{-1}$, peaking at $m_g = 13.0$, for flashes morphologically degenerate with real astrophysical signals in surveys like the Evryscopes. Of these, $340^{+150}_{-85}$ sky$^{-1}$ hour$^{-1}$ are bright enough to be visible to the naked eye in typical suburban skies with a visual limiting magnitude of $V\approx4$. These measurements place the event rate of orbital flashes orders of magnitude higher than the combined rate of public alerts from all active all-sky fast-timescale transient searches, including neutrino, gravitational-wave, gamma-ray, and radio observatories. Short-timescale orbital flashes form a dominating foreground for un-triggered searches for fast transients in low-resolution, wide-angle surveys. However, events like fast radio bursts (FRBs) with arcminute-scale localization have a low probability ($\sim10^{-5}$) of coincidence with an orbital flash, allowing optical surveys to place constraints on their potential optical counterparts in single images. Upcoming satellite internet constellations, like SpaceX Starlink, are unlikely to contribute significantly to the population of orbital flashes in normal operations.
We have realised a simple prototype system to perform searches for short timescale optical transients, utilising the novel drift scan imaging technique described by Tingay (2020). We used two coordinated and aligned cameras, with an overlap field-of-view of approximately 3.7 sq. deg., to capture over 34000 X 5 second images during approximately 24 hours of observing. The system is sensitive to optical transients, due to an effective exposure time per pixel of 21 ms, brighter than a V magnitude of 6.6. In our 89.7 sq. deg. hr of observations we find no candidate astronomical transients, giving …
An optical transient candidate of $\lesssim$ 2-second duration captured by wide-field video observations
Nihon University（日本大学）；The University of Tokyo（东京大学）；National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, National Institutes of Natural Sciences（日本国立天文台，日本国立自然科学研究院）；Kiso Observatory, Institute of Astronomy, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo（木曾天文台，东京大学理学研究科天文学系）
The duration-luminosity phase space of optical transients is used, mostly heuristically, to compare various classes of transient events, to explore the origin of new transients, and to influence optical survey observing strategies. For example, several observational searches have been guided by intriguing voids and gaps in this phase space. However we should ask: Do we expect to find transients in these voids given our understanding of the various heating sources operating in astrophysical transients? In this work, we explore a broad range of theoretical models and empirical relations to gener…
Recent observations with Swift have begun to uncover $γ$-ray transients whose total energies are comparable to those of gamma-ray bursts (GRB), but have a duration an order of magnitude or more longer than the bulk of the GRB population. Some are suggested to form a new population of ultra-long GRBs, with a mean duration around $10^4$s, while a further population with $γ-$ray durations $>10^5$ s may represent manifestations of relativistic outflows from stars shredded around massive black holes in tidal disruption flares (TDFs). Here I review the observations of these new classes of events, di…
There are several unexplored regions of the short-duration radio transient phase space. One such unexplored region is the luminosity gap between giant pulses (from pulsars) and cosmologically located fast radio bursts (FRBs). The Survey for Transient Astronomical Radio Emission 2 (STARE2) is a search for such transients out to 7 Mpc. STARE2 has a field of view of 3.6 steradians and is sensitive to one-millisecond transients above $\sim300$ kJy. With a two-station system we have detected and localized a solar burst, demonstrating that the pilot system is capable of detecting short duration radi…
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo, advanced ground-based gravitational-wave detectors, will begin collecting science data in 2015. With first detections expected to follow, it is important to quantify how well generic gravitational-wave transients can be localized on the sky. This is crucial for correctly identifying electromagnetic counterparts as well as understanding gravitational-wave physics and source populations. We present a study of sky localization capabilities for two search and parameter estimation algorithms: \emph{coherent WaveBurst}, a cons…
Aims: We have analyzed low frequency radio data of tidal disruption event (TDE) Swift J1644+57 to search for a counterpart. We consider how brief transient signals (on the order of seconds or minutes) originating from this location would appear in our data. We also consider how automatic radio frequency interference (RFI) flagging at radio telescope observatories might affect these and other transient observations in the future, particularly with brief transients of a few seconds duration. Methods: We observed the field in the low-frequency regime at 149 MHz with data obtained over several mon…
Gravitational waves (GWs) can offer a novel window into the structure and dynamics of neutron stars. Here we present the first search for long-duration quasi-monochromatic GW transients triggered by pulsar glitches. We focus on two glitches observed in radio timing of the Vela pulsar (PSR J0835-4510) on 12 December 2016 and the Crab pulsar (PSR J0534+2200) on 27 March 2017, during the Advanced LIGO second observing run (O2). We assume the GW frequency lies within a narrow band around twice the spin frequency as known from radio observatons. Using the fully-coherent transient-enabled F-statisti…
Sensitivity of BEACON to Ultra-High Energy Diffuse and Transient Neutrinos
Pennsylvania State University（宾夕法尼亚州立大学）；University of Warsaw（华沙大学）；University of Chicago（芝加哥大学）；The Ohio State University（俄亥俄州立大学）；Radboud University Nijmegen（奈梅亨拉德堡德大学）；NIKHEF（荷兰国家核与亚原子物理研究所）；University of Kansas（堪萨斯大学）；California Institute for Technology（加州理工学院）
A parametric signal plus noise inference framework for short duration non-Gaussian noise transients
University of Portsmouth（朴茨茅斯大学）；Universitat de Barcelona (UB)（巴塞罗那大学）；Institut de Fisica d’Altes Energies（高能物理研究所）；Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats（加泰罗尼亚高级研究学院）
Pulsars are spinning neutron stars which emit an electromagnetic beam. We expect pulsars to slowly decrease their rotational frequency. However, sudden increases of the rotational frequency have been observed from different pulsars. These events are called "glitches" and they are followed by a relaxation phase with timescales from days to months. Gravitational wave (GW) emission may follow these peculiar events. We give an overview of the setup for an analysis of GW data from the Advanced LIGO and Virgo third observing run (O3) arXiv:2112.10990 searching for transient GW signals lasting hours …
Soft gamma repeaters and anomalous X-ray pulsars are thought to be magnetars, neutron stars with strong magnetic fields of order $\mathord{\sim} 10^{13}$--$10^{15} \, \mathrm{gauss}$. These objects emit intermittent bursts of hard X-rays and soft gamma rays. Quasiperiodic oscillations in the X-ray tails of giant flares imply the existence of neutron star oscillation modes which could emit gravitational waves powered by the magnetar's magnetic energy reservoir. We describe a method to search for transient gravitational-wave signals associated with magnetar bursts with durations of 10s to 1000s …
XMM-Newton's large field of view and excellent sensitivity have resulted in hundreds of thousands of serendipitous X-ray detections. Whilst their spectra have been widely exploited, their variable nature has been little studied. Part of this is due to the way XMM-Newton currently operates, where observations generally have a 12 month proprietary period. It is often too late to follow-up a serendipitous transient a year after detection. New robust software could be introduced into the pipeline to automatically identify bright transients that are not the target of the observation. Statistically,…
CHIME/Slow overview and pilot survey: A new backend to search for second-duration radio transients with the CHIME telescope
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research（塔塔基础研究所）；Raman Research Institute（拉曼研究所）；LUX, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, Sorbonne Université, CNRS（巴黎天文台，巴黎文理研究大学，索邦大学，法国国家科学研究中心）；National Centre for Radio Astrophysics（国家射电天体物理中心）；Indian Institute of Astrophysics（印度天体物理研究所）；Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam（阿姆斯特丹大学安东·潘内克天文研究所）；ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy（荷兰射电天文研究所）；York University（约克大学）
The technique of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) can provide accurate localization and unique physical information about radio transients. However, it is still underutilized due to the inherent difficulties of VLBI data analysis and practical difficulties of organizing observations on short notice. We present a brief overview of the currently available VLBI arrays and observing strategies used to study long- and short-duration radio transients.
The observed lightcurves and estimated sky rate of fast extragalactic x-ray transients (XRTs) discovered in archival Chandra data indicate that they belong to two distinct XRT populations. The first population of relatively short duration pulses, which typically last less than few minutes seems to be pulses of x-ray flashes (XRFs), which are nearby long duration gamma ray bursts viewed from far off axis. The second population of much longer pulses, which typically last hours, seems to be the early time afterglows of short gamma ray bursts (SGRBs) which are beamed away from Earth, as was shown …
We report on the discovery of AT2018lqh (ZTF18abfzgpl) -- a rapidly-evolving extra-galactic transient in a star-forming host at 242 Mpc. The transient g-band light curve's duration above half-maximum light is about 2.1 days, where 0.4/1.7 days are spent on the rise/decay, respectively. The estimated bolometric light curve of this object peaked at about 7x10^42 erg/s -- roughly seven times brighter than AT2017gfo. We show that this event can be explained by an explosion with a fast (v~0.08 c) low-mass (~0.07 Msun) ejecta, composed mostly of radioactive elements. For example, ejecta dominated by…
Ultra Fast Astronomy is a new frontier becoming enabled by improved detector technology allowing discovery of optical transients on millisecond to nanosecond time scales. These may reveal counterparts of energetic processes such as fast radio bursts, gamma ray bursts, gravitational wave events, or play a role in the optical search for extraterrestrial intelligence (oSETI). We explore some example science cases and their optimization under constrained resources, basically how to distribute observations along the spectrum of short duration searches of many targets or long searches over fewer tar…
We have developed a method to determine the transient surface density and transient rate for any given survey, using Monte-Carlo simulations. This method allows us to determine the transient rate as a function of both the flux and the duration of the transients in the whole flux-duration plane rather than one or a few points as currently available methods do. It is applicable to every survey strategy that is monitoring the same part of the sky, regardless the instrument or wavelength of the survey, or the target sources. We have simulated both top-hat and Fast Rise Exponential Decay light curv…
Several new radio facilities have a field of view and sensitivity well suited for transient searches. This makes it more important than ever to accurately determine transient rates in radio surveys. The work presented here seeks to do this task by using Monte-Carlo simulations. In particular, the user inputs either a real or simulated observational setup, and the simulations code calculates transient rate as a function of transient duration and peak flux. These simulations allow for simulating a wide variety of scenarios including observations with varying sensitivities and durations, multiple…
Pushchino Multibeam Pulsar Search. IX. Detection of a minute-long transient on the LPA antenna
P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Astro Space Center, Pushchino Radio Astronomy Observatory（俄罗斯科学院普尔希诺射电天文台）；St. Petersburg State University（圣彼得堡国立大学）
We performed simulations of a large number of so-called very faint X-ray transient sources from surveys obtained using the X-ray telescope aboard the Neil Gehrels \emph{Swift} Observatory on two Galactic globular clusters, and the Galactic Center. We calculated the ratio between the duty cycle we input in our simulations and the one we measure after the simulations. We found that fluctuations in outburst duration and recurrence times affect our estimation of the duty cycle more than non detected outbursts. This biases our measures to overestimate the simulated duty cycle of sources. Moreover, …
Newborn black holes in collapsing massive stars can be accompanied by a fallback disk. The accretion rate is typically super-Eddington and strong disk outflows are expected. Such outflows could be directly observed in some failed explosions of compact (blue supergiants or Wolf-Rayet stars) progenitors, and may be more common than long-duration gamma-ray bursts. Using an analytical model, we show that the fallback disk outflows produce blue UV-optical transients with a peak bolometric luminosity of ~10^(42-43) erg s^-1 (peak R-band absolute AB magnitudes of -16 to -18) and an emission duration …
We present the results of numerical simulations of the prompt emission of short-duration gamma-ray bursts. We consider emission from the relativistic jet, the mildly relativistic cocoon, and the non-relativistic shocked ambient material. We find that the cocoon material is confined between off-axis angles 15<theta<45 degrees and gives origin to X-ray transients with a duration of a few to ~10 seconds, delayed by a few seconds from the time of the merger. We also discuss the distance at which such transients can be detected, finding that it depends sensitively on the assumptions that are made a…
We present the Deeper Wider Faster (DWF) program that coordinates more than 30 multi-wavelength and multi-messenger facilities worldwide and in space to detect and study fast transients (millisecond-to-hours duration). DWF has four main components, (1) simultaneous observations, where about 10 major facilities, from radio to gamma-ray, are coordinated to perform deep, wide-field, fast-cadenced observations of the same field at the same time. Radio telescopes search for fast radio bursts while optical imagers and high-energy instruments search for seconds-to-hours timescale transient events, (2…
In the optical sky, minutes-duration transients from cosmological distances are rare. Known objects that give rise to such transients include gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the most luminous explosions in the universe that have been detected at redshift as high as z ~ 9.4. These high-redshift GRBs and their associated emission can be used to probe the star formation and reionization history in the era of cosmic dawn. Here we report a near-infrared transient with an observed duration shorter than 245 s coincident with the luminous star-forming galaxy GN-z11 at z ~ 11. The telluric absorption shown in…
Short gamma-ray burst (SGRB) GRB 170817A was found to be related to a binary neutron star (BNS) merger. It is uncertain whether all SGRBs are caused by BNS mergers, and also under what conditions a BNS merger can cause a SGRB. As BNS mergers can cause SGRBs, afterglow observations will also provide an alternative measurement of the BNS merger rate independent of gravitational-wave observations. In previous work by Feng et al. (2014), the feasibility of the detection of afterglows was considered using a variety of radio observatories and a simple flux threshold detection algorithm. Here, we con…
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright radio transients with short durations and extremely high brightness temperatures, and their physical origins are still unknown. Recently, a repeating source, FRB 20200120E, was found in a globular cluster in the very nearby M81 galaxy. The associated globular cluster has an age of $\sim9.13~{\rm Gyr}$, and hosts an old population of stars. In this work, we consider that an FRB source is in a close binary system with a low-mass main sequence star as its companion. Due to the large burst energy of the FRB, when the companion star stops the FRB, its surface wou…
The next generation of wide-field cosmic microwave background (CMB) surveys are uniquely poised to open a new window for time-domain astronomy in the millimeter band. Here we explore the discovery phase space for extragalactic transients with near-term and future CMB experiments to characterize the expected population. We use existing millimeter-band light curves of known transients (gamma-ray bursts, tidal disruption events, fast blue optical transients, neutron star mergers) and theoretical models, in conjunction with known and estimated volumetric rates. Using Monte Carlo simulations of var…
Neutron stars are known to show accelerated spin-up of their rotational frequency called a glitch. Highly magnetized rotating neutron stars (pulsars) are frequently observed by radio telescopes (and in other frequencies), where the glitch is observed as irregular arrival times of pulses which are otherwise very regular. A glitch in an isolated neutron star can excite the fundamental (f)-mode oscillations which can lead to gravitational wave generation. Electromagnetic observations of pulsars (and hence pulsar glitches) require the pulsar to be oriented so that the jet is pointed toward the det…
We have characterized the typical temporal behaviour of the bright X-ray flares detected from the three Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients showing the most extreme transient behaviour (XTEJ1739-302, IGRJ17544-2619, SAXJ1818.6-1703). We focus here on the cumulative distributions of the waiting-time (time interval between two consecutive X-ray flares), and the duration of the hard X-ray activity (duration of the brightest phase of an SFXT outburst), as observed by INTEGRAL/IBIS in the energy band 17-50 keV. Adopting the cumulative distribution of waiting-times, it is possible to identify the typic…
Recent arcsecond localizations of Fast Radio Bursts and identifications of their host galaxies confirmed their extragalactic origin.While FRB 121102 resides in the bright region of a dwarf star forming galaxy, other FRBs reside in more massive galaxies and are related to older stellar populations. We compare the host galaxy properties of {nine} FRBs with those of several types of stellar transients: from young to old population, long duration gamma ray bursts (LGRBs), superluminous supernovae (SLSNe), Type Ib/Ic supernovae (SN Ibc), Type II supernovae (SN II), type Ia supernovae (SN Ia), and s…
The observed light curves and other properties of the two extragalactic fast x-ray transients, CDF-S XT1 and CDF-S XT2, which were discovered recently in archival data of the Chandra Deep Field-South (CDF-S) observations, indicate that they belong to two different populations of X-ray transients. XT1 seems to be an x-ray flash (XRF), i.e., a narrowly beamed long duration gamma ray burst viewed from far off-axis while XT2 seems to be a nebular emission powered by a newly born millisecond pulsar in a neutron stars binary merger.
We present an optical and infrared (IR) study of IC 10 X-2, a high-mass X-ray binary in the galaxy IC 10. Previous optical and X-ray studies suggest X-2 is a Supergiant Fast X-ray Transient: a large-amplitude (factor of $\sim$ 100), short-duration (hours to weeks) X-ray outburst on 2010 May 21. We analyze R- and g-band light curves of X-2 from the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory taken between 2013 July 15 and 2017 Feb 14 show high-amplitude ($\gtrsim$ 1 mag), short-duration ($\lesssim8$ d) flares and dips ($\gtrsim$ 0.5 mag). Near-IR spectroscopy of X-2 from Palomar/TripleSpec show He I…
Recent advances in time-domain astronomy have uncovered a new class of optical transients with timescales shorter than typical supernovae and a wide range of peak luminosities. Several subtypes have been identified within this broad class, including Ca-rich transients, .Ia supernovae, and fast/bright transients. We examine the predic- tions from a state-of-the-art grid of three-dimensional simulations of dynamical white dwarf interactions in the context of these fast optical transients. We find that for colli- sions involving carbon-oxygen or oxygen-neon white dwarfs the peak luminosities and …
Fast Luminous Extragalactic Transients in the VLA Sky Survey: Implications for the rates of Accretion-Induced Collapse Events, Fast Blue Optical Transients and Gamma Ray Burst Afterglows
Short-duration flares at millimeter wavelengths provide unique insights into the strongest magnetic reconnection events in stellar coronae, and combine with longer-term variability to introduce complications to next-generation cosmology surveys. We analyze 5.5 years of JCMT Transient Survey 850 micron submillimeter monitoring observations toward eight Gould Belt star-forming regions to search for evidence of transient events or long-duration variability from faint sources. The eight regions (30 arcmin diameter fields), including ~1200 infrared-selected YSOs, have been observed on average 47 ti…
Several types of extra-galactic high-energy transients have been discovered, which include high-luminosity and low-luminosity long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), short-duration GRBs, supernova shock breakouts (SBOs), and tidal disruption events (TDEs) without or with an associated relativistic jet. In this paper, we apply a unified method to systematically study the redshift-dependent event rate densities and the global luminosity functions (ignoring redshift evolution) of these transients. We introduce some empirical formulae for the redshift-dependent event rate densities for different ty…
A High Rate of White Dwarf-Neutron Star Mergers & Their Transients
我们认为，Badenes等人（2009年）最近突破性地发现了一颗附近（约50 pc）的白矮星-中子星（或黑洞）双星（SDSS 1257+5428），合并时间尺度约为5亿年，这意味着这样的系统很常见;我们估计银河系中有10^6个数量级。虽然存在很大的不确定性，但推导出的银河系合并速率名义上为每年约5 x 10^-4，仅比Ia型和核心坍缩超新星（SN）的速率分别小3-6倍和20-40倍。这意味着，在局部宇宙中，合并率约为0.5 ~ 1 x 10^4/Gpc ^3/年，比观测到的（未经过射束校正的）长持续时间伽马射线暴（GRB）率高出约5000-10000倍。我们估计，在95%的置信度下，银河系的死亡率下限为每年2.5 x 10^-5。我们简要讨论了这一发现对长、短持续时间伽玛暴及其前身星普查、Ib/c型超新星前身星的紧伴双星频率、超高能宇宙射线起源、快速旋转中子星和2-3 M太阳黑洞的形成、微弱类Ia超新星普查、以及用于即将到来的和当前的瞬态勘测（例如，LOSS、PTF、LSST），以及用于高频（LIGO）和低频（LISA）引力波搜索。
