Search Menu
DOE PAGES title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information
Search Scholarly Publications

Title: iPTF Archival Search for Fast Optical Transients

Abstract

There has been speculation about a class of relativistic explosions with an initial Lorentz factor Γinit smaller than that of classical gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). These "dirty fireballs" would lack prompt GRB emission but could be pursued via their optical afterglow, appearing as transients that fade overnight. We report a search for such transients (that fade by 5-σ in magnitude overnight) in four years of archival photometric data from the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF). Our search criteria yielded 50 candidates. Of these, two were afterglows to GRBs that had been found in dedicated follow-up observations to triggers from the Fermi GRB Monitor. Another (iPTF14yb) was a GRB afterglow discovered serendipitously. Eight were spurious artifacts of reference image subtraction, and one was an asteroid. The remaining 38 candidates have red stellar counterparts in external catalogs. The photometric and spectroscopic properties of the counterparts identify these transients as strong flares from M dwarfs of spectral type M3-M7 at distances of d ≈ 0.15-2.1 kpc; three counterparts were already spectroscopically classified as late-type M stars. With iPTF14yb as the only confirmed relativistic outflow discovered independently of a high-energy trigger, we constrain the all-sky rate of transients that peak at m = 18 andmore » fade by Δm = 2 mag in Δt = 3 hr to be 680 yr-1, with a 68% confidence interval of 1119-2236 yr-1. This implies that the rate of visible dirty fireballs is at most comparable to that of the known population of long-duration GRBs.« less

Authors:
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [3];  [3]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [5];  [1];  [6];  [7]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [8]; ORCiD logo [9]; ORCiD logo [7];  [10]; ORCiD logo [10]; ORCiD logo [8]; ORCiD logo [11] more »;  [12] « less
+ Show Author Affiliations
  1. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States). Cahill Center for Astrophysics
  2. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  3. Univ. of California, Merced, CA (United States)
  4. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States). Astrophysics Science Division; Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States). Joint Space-Science Inst.
  5. Liverpool John Moores Univ., Liverpool (United Kingdom). Astrophysics Research Inst.
  6. Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States). Dept. of Astronomy
  7. Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI (United States). Dept. of Physics
  8. Weizmann Inst. of Science, Rehovot (Israel). Benoziyo Center for Astrophysics
  9. Inst. of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), Granada (Spain)
  10. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States). Infrared Processing and Analysis Center
  11. Stockholm Univ. (Sweden). Oskar Klein Centre and Dept. of Astronomy
  12. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States). LIGO Lab.
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR); National Science Foundation (NSF); Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Spain)
OSTI Identifier:
1456997
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC02-05CH11231; DGE1144469; AYA 2014-58381-P; IJCI-2015-261; 1545949
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
The Astrophysical Journal. Letters (Online)
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Name: The Astrophysical Journal. Letters (Online); Journal Volume: 854; Journal Issue: 1; Journal ID: ISSN 2041-8213
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS

Citation Formats

Ho, Anna Y. Q., Kulkarni, S. R., Nugent, Peter E., Zhao, Weijie, Rusu, Florin, Cenko, S. Bradley, Ravi, Vikram, Kasliwal, Mansi M., Perley, Daniel A., Adams, Scott M., Bellm, Eric C., Brady, Patrick, Fremling, Christoffer, Gal-Yam, Avishay, Kann, David Alexander, Kaplan, David, Laher, Russ R., Masci, Frank, Ofek, Eran O., Sollerman, Jesper, and Urban, Alex. iPTF Archival Search for Fast Optical Transients. United States: N. p., 2018. Web. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/aaaa62.
Copy to clipboard
Ho, Anna Y. Q., Kulkarni, S. R., Nugent, Peter E., Zhao, Weijie, Rusu, Florin, Cenko, S. Bradley, Ravi, Vikram, Kasliwal, Mansi M., Perley, Daniel A., Adams, Scott M., Bellm, Eric C., Brady, Patrick, Fremling, Christoffer, Gal-Yam, Avishay, Kann, David Alexander, Kaplan, David, Laher, Russ R., Masci, Frank, Ofek, Eran O., Sollerman, Jesper, & Urban, Alex. iPTF Archival Search for Fast Optical Transients. United States. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aaaa62
Copy to clipboard
Ho, Anna Y. Q., Kulkarni, S. R., Nugent, Peter E., Zhao, Weijie, Rusu, Florin, Cenko, S. Bradley, Ravi, Vikram, Kasliwal, Mansi M., Perley, Daniel A., Adams, Scott M., Bellm, Eric C., Brady, Patrick, Fremling, Christoffer, Gal-Yam, Avishay, Kann, David Alexander, Kaplan, David, Laher, Russ R., Masci, Frank, Ofek, Eran O., Sollerman, Jesper, and Urban, Alex. Fri . "iPTF Archival Search for Fast Optical Transients". United States. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aaaa62. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1456997.
Copy to clipboard
@article{osti_1456997,
title = {iPTF Archival Search for Fast Optical Transients},
author = {Ho, Anna Y. Q. and Kulkarni, S. R. and Nugent, Peter E. and Zhao, Weijie and Rusu, Florin and Cenko, S. Bradley and Ravi, Vikram and Kasliwal, Mansi M. and Perley, Daniel A. and Adams, Scott M. and Bellm, Eric C. and Brady, Patrick and Fremling, Christoffer and Gal-Yam, Avishay and Kann, David Alexander and Kaplan, David and Laher, Russ R. and Masci, Frank and Ofek, Eran O. and Sollerman, Jesper and Urban, Alex},
abstractNote = {There has been speculation about a class of relativistic explosions with an initial Lorentz factor Γinit smaller than that of classical gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). These "dirty fireballs" would lack prompt GRB emission but could be pursued via their optical afterglow, appearing as transients that fade overnight. We report a search for such transients (that fade by 5-σ in magnitude overnight) in four years of archival photometric data from the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF). Our search criteria yielded 50 candidates. Of these, two were afterglows to GRBs that had been found in dedicated follow-up observations to triggers from the Fermi GRB Monitor. Another (iPTF14yb) was a GRB afterglow discovered serendipitously. Eight were spurious artifacts of reference image subtraction, and one was an asteroid. The remaining 38 candidates have red stellar counterparts in external catalogs. The photometric and spectroscopic properties of the counterparts identify these transients as strong flares from M dwarfs of spectral type M3-M7 at distances of d ≈ 0.15-2.1 kpc; three counterparts were already spectroscopically classified as late-type M stars. With iPTF14yb as the only confirmed relativistic outflow discovered independently of a high-energy trigger, we constrain the all-sky rate of transients that peak at m = 18 and fade by Δm = 2 mag in Δt = 3 hr to be 680 yr-1, with a 68% confidence interval of 1119-2236 yr-1. This implies that the rate of visible dirty fireballs is at most comparable to that of the known population of long-duration GRBs.},
doi = {10.3847/2041-8213/aaaa62},
journal = {The Astrophysical Journal. Letters (Online)},
number = 1,
volume = 854,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Feb 09 00:00:00 EST 2018},
month = {Fri Feb 09 00:00:00 EST 2018}
}
Copy to clipboard
Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aaaa62
Copyright Statement
Other availability
Search WorldCat Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 15 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

Figures / Tables:

Figure 1 Figure 1: The (∆t,∆m) for the 41 candidates that show significant (5-σ) intra-night fading (asteroids and artifacts of bad subtractions have been removed). The grey unlabeled points are a sample of GRB afterglows from Kann et al. (2010). For candidates with > 2 points in their light curves, we showmore » the change in magnitude from the first observation after 3 hours to the last observation before 9 hours (times measured since the burst): ∆t = tend − tstart and ∆m = mend − mstart. M-dwarf flares typically fade faster and are detected in Pan-STARRS (see Table 1) with a characteristic red color. Thus, in our sample, filtering out sources with red hosts exclusively identifies iPTF14yb, the GRB discovered serendipitously by iPTF, as well as two afterglows found in follow-up to Fermi GRB triggers. PTF11agg is shown for reference. There is one M-dwarf with a ∆t below the lower limit on the plot.« less
All figures and tables (8 total)
Save / Share:
Export Metadata
Save to My Library
You must Sign In or Create an Account in order to save documents to your library.

Works referenced in this record:

Astropy: A community Python package for astronomy
journal, September 2013

The unblinking eye on the sky
journal, March 2017

A Tale of Two Transients: GW 170104 and GRB 170105A
journal, August 2017

  • Bhalerao, V.; Kasliwal, M. M.; Bhattacharya, D.
  • The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 845, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aa81d2

Automating Discovery and Classification of Transients and Variable Stars in the Synoptic Survey Era
journal, November 2012

  • Bloom, J. S.; Richards, J. W.; Nugent, P. E.
  • Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 124, Issue 921
  • DOI: 10.1086/668468

The Sloan Digital sky Survey data Release 7 Spectroscopic m Dwarf Catalog. ii. Statistical Parallax Analysis
journal, February 2011

  • Bochanski, John J.; Hawley, Suzanne L.; West, Andrew A.
  • The Astronomical Journal, Vol. 141, Issue 3
  • DOI: 10.1088/0004-6256/141/3/98

Using machine learning for discovery in synoptic survey imaging data
journal, August 2013

  • Brink, Henrik; Richards, Joseph W.; Poznanski, Dovi
  • Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 435, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stt1306

Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory: Realtime Image Subtraction Pipeline
journal, September 2016

  • Cao, Yi; Nugent, Peter E.; Kasliwal, Mansi M.
  • Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 128, Issue 969
  • DOI: 10.1088/1538-3873/128/969/114502

DARK BURSTS IN THE SWIFT ERA: THE PALOMAR 60 INCH- SWIFT EARLY OPTICAL AFTERGLOW CATALOG
journal, March 2009

Discovery of a Cosmological, Relativistic Outburst via its Rapidly Fading Optical Emission
journal, May 2013

iPTF14yb: THE FIRST DISCOVERY OF A GAMMA-RAY BURST AFTERGLOW INDEPENDENT OF A HIGH-ENERGY TRIGGER
journal, April 2015

the Kepler Catalog of Stellar Flares
journal, September 2016

Multi-Wavelength Characterization of Stellar Flares on Low-Mass Stars Using sdss and 2mass Time-Domain Surveys
journal, March 2012

  • Davenport, James R. A.; Becker, Andrew C.; Kowalski, Adam F.
  • The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 748, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/748/1/58

Beaming, Baryon Loading, and the Synchrotron Self‐Compton Component in Gamma‐Ray Bursts
journal, July 2000

  • Dermer, Charles D.; Chiang, James; Mitman, Kurt E.
  • The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 537, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1086/309061

Rapidly Evolving and Luminous Transients from Pan-Starrs1
journal, September 2014

Unveiling the population of orphan γ -ray bursts
journal, June 2015

An Empirical Template Library of Stellar Spectra for a Wide Range of Spectral Classes, Luminosity Classes, and Metallicities Using SDSS BOSS Spectra
journal, June 2017

  • Kesseli, Aurora Y.; West, Andrew A.; Veyette, Mark
  • The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Vol. 230, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.3847/1538-4365/aa656d

M Dwarfs in Sloan Digital sky Survey Stripe 82: Photometric Light Curves and Flare rate Analysis
journal, July 2009

The Nature of the Deep Lens Survey Fast Transients
journal, May 2006

  • Kulkarni, S. R.; Rau, A.
  • The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 644, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1086/505423

The Palomar Transient Factory: System Overview, Performance, and First Results
journal, December 2009

  • Law, Nicholas M.; Kulkarni, Shrinivas R.; Dekany, Richard G.
  • Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 121, Issue 886
  • DOI: 10.1086/648598

The IPAC Image Subtraction and Discovery Pipeline for the Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory
journal, December 2016

  • Masci, Frank J.; Laher, Russ R.; Rebbapragada, Umaa D.
  • Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 129, Issue 971
  • DOI: 10.1088/1538-3873/129/971/014002

The Detectability of Orphan Afterglows
journal, November 2002

  • Nakar, Ehud; Piran, Tsvi; Granot, Jonathan
  • The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 579, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1086/342791

The physics of gamma-ray bursts
journal, January 2005

A Survey for Fast Transients in the Fornax Cluster of Galaxies
journal, August 2008

  • Rau, A.; Ofek, E. O.; Kulkarni, S. R.
  • The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 682, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1086/589762

How to Tell a Jet from a Balloon: A Proposed Test for Beaming in Gamma-Ray Bursts
journal, September 1997

  • Rhoads, James E.
  • The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 487, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1086/310876

Dirty Fireballs and Orphan Afterglows: A Tale of Two Transients
journal, July 2003

  • Rhoads, James E.
  • The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 591, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1086/368125

THE NEEDLE IN THE 100 deg 2 HAYSTACK: UNCOVERING AFTERGLOWS OF FERMI GRBs WITH THE PALOMAR TRANSIENT FACTORY
journal, June 2015

  • Singer, Leo P.; Kasliwal, Mansi M.; Cenko, S. Bradley
  • The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 806, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/806/1/52

The 13th Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the SDSS-IV Survey Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory
journal, December 2017

  • Albareti, Franco D.; Prieto, Carlos Allende; Almeida, Andres
  • The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Vol. 233, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.3847/1538-4365/aa8992

Observations of the GRB Afterglow ATLAS17aeu and Its Possible Association with GW 170104
journal, November 2017

The luminosity function and the rate of Swift's gamma-ray bursts: The luminosity function and the rate of GRBs
journal, July 2010

The Sloan Digital sky Survey data Release 7 Spectroscopic m Dwarf Catalog. i. data
journal, February 2011

  • West, Andrew A.; Morgan, Dylan P.; Bochanski, John J.
  • The Astronomical Journal, Vol. 141, Issue 3
  • DOI: 10.1088/0004-6256/141/3/97

The Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (Wise): Mission Description and Initial On-Orbit Performance
journal, November 2010

An Empirical Limit on the Kilonova Rate from the DLT40 One Day Cadence Supernova Survey
journal, December 2017

  • Yang, Sheng; Valenti, Stefano; Cappellaro, Enrico
  • The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 851, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aaa07d

The 13th Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the SDSS-IV Survey Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory
text, January 2017

  • Albareti, Franco D.; Allende Prieto, Carlos; Almeida, Andres
  • Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository
  • DOI: 10.17863/cam.20755

An Empirical Limit on the Kilonova Rate from the DLT40 One Day Cadence Supernova Survey
text, January 2017

  • Leonardo, Tartaglia,; Joshua, Haislip,; Stefano, Valenti,
  • The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
  • DOI: 10.17615/968g-ks59

Dark Bursts in the Swift Era: The Palomar 60 inch-Swift Early Optical Afterglow Catalog
text, January 2008

The Palomar Transient Factory: System Overview, Performance and First Results
text, January 2009

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE): Mission Description and Initial On-orbit Performance
text, January 2010

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR7 Spectroscopic M Dwarf Catalog II: Statistical Parallax Analysis
text, January 2011

Using Machine Learning for Discovery in Synoptic Survey Imaging
text, January 2012

Discovery of a Cosmological, Relativistic Outburst via its Rapidly Fading Optical Emission
text, January 2013

The Needle in the 100 deg2 Haystack: Uncovering Afterglows of Fermi GRBs with the Palomar Transient Factory
text, January 2015

The Physics of Gamma-Ray Bursts
text, January 2004

    Sort by:
    [ × clear filter / sort ]

    Works referencing / citing this record:

    The Palomar Transient Factory Sky2Night programme
    journal, January 2019

    • van Roestel, J.; Groot, P. J.; Kupfer, T.
    • Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 484, Issue 4
    • DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stz241

    Photometric flaring fraction of M dwarf stars from the SkyMapper Southern Survey
    journal, October 2019

    • Chang, Seo-Won; Wolf, Christian; Onken, Christopher A.
    • Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 491, Issue 1
    • DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stz2898

    Probing the extragalactic fast transient sky at minute time-scales with DECam
    journal, December 2019

    • Andreoni, I.; Cooke, J.; Webb, S.
    • Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 491, Issue 4
    • DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stz3381

    EvryFlare. I. Long-term Evryscope Monitoring of Flares from the Cool Stars across Half the Southern Sky
    journal, August 2019

    • Howard, Ward S.; Corbett, Hank; Law, Nicholas M.
    • The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 881, Issue 1
    • DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab2767

    Toward Rate Estimation for Transient Surveys. I. Assessing Transient Detectability and Volume Sensitivity for iPTF
    journal, August 2019

    • Chatterjee, Deep; Nugent, Peter E.; Brady, Patrick R.
    • The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 881, Issue 2
    • DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab2b9c
      Sort by:
      [ × clear filter / sort ]

      Figures / Tables found in this record:

      Figure 1 (p. 7)figure
      Figure 2 (p. 8)figure
      Figure 3 (p. 8)figure
      Table 1 (p. 9)table
      Table 2: Part 1 (p. 12)table
      Figure 4 (p. 13)figure
      Table 2: Part 2 (p. 13)table
      Figure 5 (p. 14)figure
        [ × clear filter / sort ]
        Figures/Tables have been extracted from DOE-funded journal article accepted manuscripts.

        Similar Records in DOE PAGES and OSTI.GOV collections: