No Arabic abstract
Supernovae (SNe) Type Ibn are rapidly evolving and bright (M$_text{R,peak}$ $sim-19$) transients interacting with He-rich circumstellar material (CSM). SN 2018bcc, detected by the ZTF shortly after explosion, provides the best constraints on the shape of the rising light curve (LC) of a fast Type Ibn. Aims: We used the high-quality data set of SN 2018bcc to study observational signatures of the class. Additionally, the powering mechanism of SN 2018bcc offers insights into the debated progenitor connection of Type Ibn SNe. Methods: We compared well-constrained LC properties obtained from empirical models are compared with the literature. We fit the pseudo-bolometric LC with semi-analytical models powered by radioactive decay and CSM interaction. Finally, we modeled the line profiles and emissivity of the prominent He I lines, in order to study the formation of P-Cygni profiles and estimate CSM properties. Results: SN 2018bcc had a rise time to peak of $5.6^{+0.2}_{-0.1}$ days in the restframe with a rising shape power-law index close to 2, and seems to be a typical rapidly evolving Type Ibn SN. The spectrum lacked signatures of SN-like ejecta and was dominated by over 15 He emission features at 20 days past peak, alongside Ca and Mg, all with V$_{text{FWHM}} sim 2000~text{km}~text{s}^{-1}$. The luminous and rapidly evolving LC could be powered by CSM interaction but not by the decay of radioactive $^{56}$Ni. Modeling of the He I lines indicated a dense and optically thick CSM that can explain the P-Cygni profiles. Conclusions: Like other rapidly-evolving Type Ibn SNe, SN 2018bcc is a luminous transient with a rapid rise to peak powered by shock interaction inside a dense and He-rich CSM. Its spectra do not support the existence of two Type Ibn spectral classes. We also note the remarkable observational match to pulsational pair instability (PPI) SN models.
We present the ATLAS discovery and initial analysis of the first 18 days of the unusual transient event, ATLAS18qqn/AT2018cow. It is characterized by a high peak luminosity ($sim$1.7 $times$ 10$^{44}$ erg s$^{-1}$), rapidly evolving light curves ($>$5 mag rise to peak in $sim$3.5 days), and hot blackbody spectra, peaking at $sim$27000 K that are relatively featureless and unchanging over the first two weeks. The bolometric light curve cannot be powered by radioactive decay under realistic assumptions. The detection of high-energy emission may suggest a central engine as the powering source. Using a magnetar model, we estimated an ejected mass of $0.1-0.4$ msol, which lies between that of low-energy core-collapse events and the kilonova, AT2017gfo. The spectra cooled rapidly from 27000 to 15000 K in just over 2 weeks but remained smooth and featureless. Broad and shallow emission lines appear after about 20 days, and we tentatively identify them as He I although they would be redshifted from their rest wavelengths. We rule out that there are any features in the spectra due to intermediate mass elements up to and including the Fe-group. The presence of r-process elements cannot be ruled out. If these lines are due to He, then we suggest a low-mass star with residual He as a potential progenitor. Alternatively, models of magnetars formed in neutron-star mergers give plausible matches to the data.
We present results from applying the SNAD anomaly detection pipeline to the third public data release of the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF DR3). The pipeline is composed of 3 stages: feature extraction, search of outliers with machine learning algorithms and anomaly identification with followup by human experts. Our analysis concentrates in three ZTF fields, comprising more than 2.25 million objects. A set of 4 automatic learning algorithms was used to identify 277 outliers, which were subsequently scrutinised by an expert. From these, 188 (68%) were found to be bogus light curves -- including effects from the image subtraction pipeline as well as overlapping between a star and a known asteroid, 66 (24%) were previously reported sources whereas 23 (8%) correspond to non-catalogued objects, with the two latter cases of potential scientific interest (e. g. 1 spectroscopically confirmed RS Canum Venaticorum star, 4 supernovae candidates, 1 red dwarf flare). Moreover, using results from the expert analysis, we were able to identify a simple bi-dimensional relation which can be used to aid filtering potentially bogus light curves in future studies. We provide a complete list of objects with potential scientific application so they can be further scrutinised by the community. These results confirm the importance of combining automatic machine learning algorithms with domain knowledge in the construction of recommendation systems for astronomy. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/snad-space/zwad
The Zwicky Transient Facility is a new robotic-observing program, in which a newly engineered 600-MP digital camera with a pioneeringly large field of view, 47~square degrees, will be installed into the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory. The camera will generate $sim 1$~petabyte of raw image data over three years of operations. In parallel related work, new hardware and software systems are being developed to process these data in real time and build a long-term archive for the processed products. The first public release of archived products is planned for early 2019, which will include processed images and astronomical-source catalogs of the northern sky in the $g$ and $r$ bands. Source catalogs based on two different methods will be generated for the archive: aperture photometry and point-spread-function fitting.
The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a public-private enterprise, is a new time domain survey employing a dedicated camera on the Palomar 48-inch Schmidt telescope with a 47 deg$^2$ field of view and 8 second readout time. It is well positioned in the development of time domain astronomy, offering operations at 10% of the scale and style of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) with a single 1-m class survey telescope. The public surveys will cover the observable northern sky every three nights in g and r filters and the visible Galactic plane every night in g and r. Alerts generated by these surveys are sent in real time to brokers. A consortium of universities which provided funding (partnership) are undertaking several boutique surveys. The combination of these surveys producing one million alerts per night allows for exploration of transient and variable astrophysical phenomena brighter than r $sim$ 20.5 on timescales of minutes to years. We describe the primary science objectives driving ZTF including the physics of supernovae and relativistic explosions, multi-messenger astrophysics, supernova cosmology, active galactic nuclei and tidal disruption events, stellar variability, and Solar System objects.
Helium is expected to be present in the ejecta of some hydrogen-poor superluminous supernovae (SLSN-I). However, so far only one event, PTF10hgi has been identified with He features in its photospheric spectra (Quimby et al. 2018). We present the discovery of a new He-rich SLSN-I, ZTF19aawfbtg (SN2019hge) at $z=0.0866$. This event has more than 10 optical spectra at phases from $-41$ to $+103$,days relative to the peak, most of which match well with that of PTF10hgi. Confirmation comes from a near-IR spectrum taken at $+34$ days, revealing He I features with P-Cygni profiles at 1.083 and 2.058$mu$m. Using the optical spectra of PTF10hgi and SN2019hge as templates, we examine 70 SLSN-I discovered by ZTF in the first two years of operation and found additional five SLSN-I with distinct He-features. The excitation of He,I atoms in normal core collapse supernovae requires non-thermal radiation, as proposed by previous studies. These He-rich events can not be explained by traditional $^{56}$Ni mixing model because of their blue spectra, high peak luminosity and slow rising time scales. Magnetar models offer a possible solution since pulsar winds naturally generate high energy particles as sources of non-thermal excitation. An alternative model is ejecta interaction with H-poor CSM which may be supported by the observed light curve undulations. These six SLSN-Ib appear to have relatively low-peak luminosities (rest-frame $M_g = -20.06pm0.16$ mag).