The First Tidal Disruption Flare in ZTF: From Photometric Selection to Multi-wavelength Characterization

The First Tidal Disruption Flare in ZTF: From Photometric Selection to Multi-wavelength Characterization

© 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.. We present Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) observations of the tidal disruption flare AT2018zr/PS18kh reported by Holoien et al. and detected during ZTF commissioning. The ZTF light curve of the tidal disruption event (TDE) samples the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Van Velzen, S., Gezari, S., Cenko, S.B., Kara, E., Miller-Jones, James, Hung, T., Bright, J., Roth, N., Blagorodnova, N., Huppenkothen, D., Yan, L., Ofek, E., Sollerman, J., Frederick, S., Ward, C., Graham, M.J., Fender, R., Kasliwal, M.M., Canella, C., Stein, R., Giomi, M., Brinnel, V., Santen, J.V., Nordin, J., Bellm, E.C., Dekany, R., Fremling, C., Golkhou, V.Z., Kupfer, T., Kulkarni, S.R., Laher, R.R., Mahabal, A., Masci, F.J., Miller, A.A., Neill, J.D., Riddle, R., Rigault, M., Rusholme, B., Soumagnac, M.T., Tachibana, Y.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: IOP PUBLISHING LTD 2019
Subjects:
Science & Technology
Physical Sciences
Astronomy & Astrophysics
accretion, accretion disks
galaxies: nuclei
STELLAR POPULATION SYNTHESIS
BLACK-HOLE
RADIO-EMISSION
UNCERTAINTIES
EVENT
STARS
I.
PROPAGATION
CALIBRATION
EVOLUTION
Online Access:http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/FT140101082
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/80174
Description
Summary:© 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.. We present Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) observations of the tidal disruption flare AT2018zr/PS18kh reported by Holoien et al. and detected during ZTF commissioning. The ZTF light curve of the tidal disruption event (TDE) samples the rise-to-peak exceptionally well, with 50 days of g- and r-band detections before the time of maximum light. We also present our multi-wavelength follow-up observations, including the detection of a thermal (kT ≈ 100 eV) X-ray source that is two orders of magnitude fainter than the contemporaneous optical/UV blackbody luminosity, and a stringent upper limit to the radio emission. We use observations of 128 known active galactic nuclei (AGNs) to assess the quality of the ZTF astrometry, finding a median host-flare distance of 0.″2 for genuine nuclear flares. Using ZTF observations of variability from known AGNs and supernovae we show how these sources can be separated from TDEs. A combination of light-curve shape, color, and location in the host galaxy can be used to select a clean TDE sample from multi-band optical surveys such as ZTF or the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

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