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Title: The Zwicky Transient Facility Bright Transient Survey. II. A Public Statistical Sample for Exploring Supernova Demographics

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal (Online)
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  1. Liverpool John Moores Univ. (United Kingdom)
  2. California Institute of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
  3. Stockholm Univ. (Sweden)
  4. Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL (United States); Adler Planetarium, Chicago, IL (United States)
  5. Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)
  6. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  7. Weizmann Inst. of Science, Rehovot (Israel)
  8. California Institute of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  9. Univ. of Lyon (France); Université Claude-Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL) (France); Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) (France)
  10. Humboldt Univ. of Berlin (Germany)
  11. Weizmann Inst. of Science, Rehovot (Israel); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Here we present a public catalog of transients from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) Bright Transient Survey, a magnitude-limited (m < 19 mag in either the g or r filter) survey for extragalactic transients in the ZTF public stream. We introduce cuts on survey coverage, sky visibility around peak light, and other properties unconnected to the nature of the transient, and show that the resulting statistical sample is spectroscopically 97% complete at <18 mag, 93% complete at <18.5 mag, and 75% complete at <19 mag. We summarize the fundamental properties of this population, identifying distinct duration–luminosity correlations in a variety of supernova (SN) classes and associating the majority of fast optical transients with well-established spectroscopic SN types (primarily SN Ibn and II/IIb). We measure the Type Ia SN and core-collapse (CC) SN rates and luminosity functions, which show good consistency with recent work. About 7% of CC SNe explode in very low-luminosity galaxies (Mi > –16 mag), 10% in red-sequence galaxies, and 1% in massive ellipticals. We find no significant difference in the luminosity or color distributions between the host galaxies of SNe Type II and SNe Type Ib/c, suggesting that line-driven wind stripping does not play a major role in the loss of the hydrogen envelope from their progenitors. Future large-scale classification efforts with ZTF and other wide-area surveys will provide high-quality measurements of the rates, properties, and environments of all known types of optical transients and limits on the existence of theoretically predicted but as yet unobserved explosions.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); National Science Foundation (NSF); European Research Council (ERC); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; AST-1440341; 1106171; PHY-1607611; 1545949; AST-1238877; 725161; 759194; NNX08AR22G
OSTI ID:
1838148
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Vol. 904, Issue 1; ISSN 1538-4357
Publisher:
IOP PublishingCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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