Rapidly evolving transients in the Dark Energy Survey

DES Collaboration

doi:10.1093/MNRAS/STY2309

Rapidly evolving transients in the Dark Energy Survey

DES Collaboration

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Abstract

We present the results of a search for rapidly evolving transients in the Dark Energy Survey Supernova Programme. These events are characterized by fast light-curve evolution (rise to peak in≲10 d and exponential decline in≲30 d after peak).We discovered 72 events, including 37 transients with a spectroscopic redshift from host galaxy spectral features. The 37 events increase the total number of rapid optical transients by more than a factor of two. They are found at a wide range of redshifts (0.05 < z < 1.56) and peak brightnesses (-15.75 > M_g > -22.25). The multiband photometry is well fit by a blackbody up to few weeks after peak. The events appear to be hot (T ≈ 10 000-30 000 K) and large (R ≈ 10¹⁴ - 2 × 10¹⁵ cm) at peak, and generally expand and cool in time, though some events show evidence for a receding photosphere with roughly constant temperature. Spectra taken around peak are dominated by a blue featureless continuum consistent with hot, optically thick ejecta. We compare our events with a previously suggested physical scenario involving shock breakout in an optically thick wind surrounding a core-collapse supernova, we conclude that current models for such a scenario might need an additional power source to describe the exponential decline. We find that these transients tend to favour star-forming host galaxies, which could be consistent with a core-collapse origin. However, more detailed modelling of the light curves is necessary to determine their physical origin.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	894-917
Number of pages	24
Journal	Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume	481
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/MNRAS/STY2309
State	Published - Nov 21 2018

Funding

Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, the Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics at the Ohio State University, the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundac¸ão Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desen-volvimento Científico e Tecnológico and the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovac¸ão, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Collaborating Institutions in the Dark Energy Survey. We acknowledge support from EU/FP7-ERC grant no [615929]. Based in part on data obtained from the ESO Science Archive Facility under program 097.D-0709. Parts of this research were conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO), through project number CE110001020. Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, theMinistry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology FacilitiesCouncil of theUnitedKingdom, theHigher Education Funding Council for England, the NationalCenter for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, the Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics at the Ohio State University, the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico and the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Collaborating Institutions in the Dark Energy Survey. The Collaborating Institutions are Argonne National Laboratory, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Cambridge, Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas-Madrid, the University of Chicago, University College London, the DES-Brazil Consortium, the University of Edinburgh, the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Institut de Ciències de l'Espai (IEEC/CSIC), the Institut de Física d'Altes Energies, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Ludwig-Maximilians Universit ät München and the associated Excellence Cluster Universe, the University of Michigan, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the University of Nottingham, The Ohio State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Portsmouth, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, the University of Sussex, TexasA&MUniversity, and the OzDESMembership Consortium. Based in part on observations at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The DES data management system is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers AST-1138766 and AST-1536171. The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by MINECO under grants AYA2015-71825, ESP2015-66861, FPA2015-68048, SEV-2016-0588, SEV-2016-0597, and MDM-2015-0509, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union. IFAE is partially funded by the CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) includingERCgrant agreements 240672, 291329, and 306478.We acknowledge support from theAustralian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO), through project number CE110001020, and the Brazilian Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia (INCT) e-Universe (CNPq grant 465376/2014-2). MJC acknowledges the support of the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) under grant (ST/P000398/1). This manuscript has been authored by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11359 with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics. TheUnited StatesGovernment retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. We acknowledge support from EU/FP7-ERC grant no [615929]. Based in part on data obtained from the ESO Science Archive Facility under program 097.D-0709. Parts of this research were conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO), through project number CE110001020. The DES data management system is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers AST-1138766 and AST-1536171. The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by MINECO under grants AYA2015-71825, ESP2015-66861, FPA2015-68048, SEV-2016-0588, SEV-2016-0597, and MDM-2015-0509, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union. IFAE is partially funded by the CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) including ERC grant agreements 240672, 291329, and 306478. We acknowledge support from theAustralian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAAS-TRO), through project number CE110001020, and the Brazilian Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia (INCT) e-Universe (CNPq grant 465376/2014-2). MJC acknowledges the support of the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) under grant (ST/P000398/1). Based in part on observations at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. This manuscript has been authored by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11359 with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes.

Funders	Funder number
Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics
CAAS-TRO	CE110001020
Collaborating Institutions in the Dark Energy Survey
Conselho Nacional de Desen-volvimento Científico e Tecnológico
EU/FP7-ERC
European Union’s Seventh Framework Program
FP7/2007
Fermi Research Alliance, LLC	DE-AC02-07CH11359
INCT
Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago
Ministry of Science and Education of Spain
Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University
National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics
U.S. National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation	AST-1138766, AST-1536171
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Science
High Energy Physics
University of Pennsylvania
Ohio State University
University of Michigan
Seventh Framework Programme	1138766, 240672, 615929, 306478, 291329
Higher Education Funding Council for England
Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Ohio State University
Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia Midas
Science and Technology Facilities Council	ST/P000398/1
European Commission
European Research Council
University of Sussex
Australian Research Council
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Generalitat de Catalunya
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad	SEV-2016-0588, SEV-2016-0597, ESP2015-66861, MDM-2015-0509, FPA2015-68048, AYA2015-71825
Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico	465376/2014-2
Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos
Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia
European Regional Development Fund
National Science Foundation

Keywords

Supernovae: general

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10.1093/MNRAS/STY2309

Cite this

@article{780428ca14aa4be79477959e2419dbec,

title = "Rapidly evolving transients in the Dark Energy Survey",

abstract = "We present the results of a search for rapidly evolving transients in the Dark Energy Survey Supernova Programme. These events are characterized by fast light-curve evolution (rise to peak in≲10 d and exponential decline in≲30 d after peak).We discovered 72 events, including 37 transients with a spectroscopic redshift from host galaxy spectral features. The 37 events increase the total number of rapid optical transients by more than a factor of two. They are found at a wide range of redshifts (0.05 < z < 1.56) and peak brightnesses (-15.75 > Mg > -22.25). The multiband photometry is well fit by a blackbody up to few weeks after peak. The events appear to be hot (T ≈ 10 000-30 000 K) and large (R ≈ 1014 - 2 × 1015 cm) at peak, and generally expand and cool in time, though some events show evidence for a receding photosphere with roughly constant temperature. Spectra taken around peak are dominated by a blue featureless continuum consistent with hot, optically thick ejecta. We compare our events with a previously suggested physical scenario involving shock breakout in an optically thick wind surrounding a core-collapse supernova, we conclude that current models for such a scenario might need an additional power source to describe the exponential decline. We find that these transients tend to favour star-forming host galaxies, which could be consistent with a core-collapse origin. However, more detailed modelling of the light curves is necessary to determine their physical origin.",

keywords = "Supernovae: general",

author = "{DES Collaboration} and M. Pursiainen and M. Childress and M. Smith and S. Prajs and M. Sullivan and Davis, {T. M.} and Foley, {R. J.} and J. Asorey and J. Calcino and D. Carollo and C. Curtin and D'Andrea, {C. B.} and K. Glazebrook and C. Gutierrez and Hinton, {S. R.} and Hoormann, {J. K.} and C. Inserra and R. Kessler and A. King and K. Kuehn and Lewis, {G. F.} and C. Lidman and E. Macaulay and A. M{\"o}ller and Nichol, {R. C.} and M. Sako and Sommer, {N. E.} and E. Swann and Tucker, {B. E.} and Uddin, {S. A.} and P. Wiseman and B. Zhang and Abbott, {T. M.C.} and Abdalla, {F. B.} and S. Allam and J. Annis and S. Avila and D. Brooks and E. Buckley-Geer and Burke, {D. L.} and Rosell, {A. Carnero} and Kind, {M. Carrasco} and J. Carretero and Castander, {F. J.} and Cunha, {C. E.} and C. Davis and {De Vicente}, J. and Diehl, {H. T.} and P. Doel and E. Suchyta",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.",

year = "2018",

month = nov,

day = "21",

doi = "10.1093/MNRAS/STY2309",

language = "English",

volume = "481",

pages = "894--917",

journal = "Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society",

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T1 - Rapidly evolving transients in the Dark Energy Survey

AU - DES Collaboration

AU - Pursiainen, M.

AU - Childress, M.

AU - Smith, M.

AU - Prajs, S.

AU - Sullivan, M.

AU - Davis, T. M.

AU - Foley, R. J.

AU - Asorey, J.

AU - Calcino, J.

AU - Carollo, D.

AU - Curtin, C.

AU - D'Andrea, C. B.

AU - Glazebrook, K.

AU - Gutierrez, C.

AU - Hinton, S. R.

AU - Hoormann, J. K.

AU - Inserra, C.

AU - Kessler, R.

AU - King, A.

AU - Kuehn, K.

AU - Lewis, G. F.

AU - Lidman, C.

AU - Macaulay, E.

AU - Möller, A.

AU - Nichol, R. C.

AU - Sako, M.

AU - Sommer, N. E.

AU - Swann, E.

AU - Tucker, B. E.

AU - Uddin, S. A.

AU - Wiseman, P.

AU - Zhang, B.

AU - Abbott, T. M.C.

AU - Abdalla, F. B.

AU - Allam, S.

AU - Annis, J.

AU - Avila, S.

AU - Brooks, D.

AU - Buckley-Geer, E.

AU - Burke, D. L.

AU - Rosell, A. Carnero

AU - Kind, M. Carrasco

AU - Carretero, J.

AU - Castander, F. J.

AU - Cunha, C. E.

AU - Davis, C.

AU - De Vicente, J.

AU - Diehl, H. T.

AU - Doel, P.

AU - Suchyta, E.

PY - 2018/11/21

Y1 - 2018/11/21

N2 - We present the results of a search for rapidly evolving transients in the Dark Energy Survey Supernova Programme. These events are characterized by fast light-curve evolution (rise to peak in≲10 d and exponential decline in≲30 d after peak).We discovered 72 events, including 37 transients with a spectroscopic redshift from host galaxy spectral features. The 37 events increase the total number of rapid optical transients by more than a factor of two. They are found at a wide range of redshifts (0.05 < z < 1.56) and peak brightnesses (-15.75 > Mg > -22.25). The multiband photometry is well fit by a blackbody up to few weeks after peak. The events appear to be hot (T ≈ 10 000-30 000 K) and large (R ≈ 1014 - 2 × 1015 cm) at peak, and generally expand and cool in time, though some events show evidence for a receding photosphere with roughly constant temperature. Spectra taken around peak are dominated by a blue featureless continuum consistent with hot, optically thick ejecta. We compare our events with a previously suggested physical scenario involving shock breakout in an optically thick wind surrounding a core-collapse supernova, we conclude that current models for such a scenario might need an additional power source to describe the exponential decline. We find that these transients tend to favour star-forming host galaxies, which could be consistent with a core-collapse origin. However, more detailed modelling of the light curves is necessary to determine their physical origin.

AB - We present the results of a search for rapidly evolving transients in the Dark Energy Survey Supernova Programme. These events are characterized by fast light-curve evolution (rise to peak in≲10 d and exponential decline in≲30 d after peak).We discovered 72 events, including 37 transients with a spectroscopic redshift from host galaxy spectral features. The 37 events increase the total number of rapid optical transients by more than a factor of two. They are found at a wide range of redshifts (0.05 < z < 1.56) and peak brightnesses (-15.75 > Mg > -22.25). The multiband photometry is well fit by a blackbody up to few weeks after peak. The events appear to be hot (T ≈ 10 000-30 000 K) and large (R ≈ 1014 - 2 × 1015 cm) at peak, and generally expand and cool in time, though some events show evidence for a receding photosphere with roughly constant temperature. Spectra taken around peak are dominated by a blue featureless continuum consistent with hot, optically thick ejecta. We compare our events with a previously suggested physical scenario involving shock breakout in an optically thick wind surrounding a core-collapse supernova, we conclude that current models for such a scenario might need an additional power source to describe the exponential decline. We find that these transients tend to favour star-forming host galaxies, which could be consistent with a core-collapse origin. However, more detailed modelling of the light curves is necessary to determine their physical origin.

KW - Supernovae: general

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U2 - 10.1093/MNRAS/STY2309

DO - 10.1093/MNRAS/STY2309

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85054809593

SN - 0035-8711

VL - 481

SP - 894

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JO - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

JF - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

IS - 1

ER -

Rapidly evolving transients in the Dark Energy Survey

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