The Astrophysical Journal (Jan 2023)
Volumetric Rates of Luminous Red Novae and Intermediate-luminosity Red Transients with the Zwicky Transient Facility
- Viraj R. Karambelkar,
- Mansi M. Kasliwal,
- Nadejda Blagorodnova,
- Jesper Sollerman,
- Robert Aloisi,
- Shreya G. Anand,
- Igor Andreoni,
- Thomas G. Brink,
- Rachel Bruch,
- David Cook,
- Kaustav Kashyap Das,
- Kishalay De,
- Andrew Drake,
- Alexei V. Filippenko,
- Christoffer Fremling,
- George Helou,
- Anna Ho,
- Jacob Jencson,
- David Jones,
- Russ R. Laher,
- Frank J. Masci,
- Kishore C. Patra,
- Josiah Purdum,
- Alexander Reedy,
- Tawny Sit,
- Yashvi Sharma,
- Anastasios Tzanidakis,
- Stéfan J. van der Walt,
- Yuhan Yao,
- Chaoran Zhang
Affiliations
- Viraj R. Karambelkar
- ORCiD
- Cahill Center for Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA 91125, USA ; [email protected]
- Mansi M. Kasliwal
- ORCiD
- Cahill Center for Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA 91125, USA ; [email protected]
- Nadejda Blagorodnova
- ORCiD
- Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University , Nijmegen, The Netherlands
- Jesper Sollerman
- ORCiD
- The Oskar Klein Centre, Department of Astronomy, Stockholm University , AlbaNova, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden
- Robert Aloisi
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin-Madison , 475 North Charter Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA
- Shreya G. Anand
- ORCiD
- Cahill Center for Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA 91125, USA ; [email protected]
- Igor Andreoni
- ORCiD
- Joint Space-Science Institute, University of Maryland , College Park, MD 20742, USA; Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland , College Park, MD 20742, USA; Astrophysics Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center , Mail Code 661, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
- Thomas G. Brink
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of California , Berkeley, CA 94720-3411, USA
- Rachel Bruch
- ORCiD
- Department of Particle Physics and Astrophysics, Weizmann Institute of Science , 234 Herzl St, 76100 Rehovot, Israel
- David Cook
- ORCiD
- IPAC, California Institute of Technology , 1200 E. California Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
- Kaustav Kashyap Das
- ORCiD
- Cahill Center for Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA 91125, USA ; [email protected]
- Kishalay De
- MIT-Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research , 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
- Andrew Drake
- ORCiD
- Cahill Center for Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA 91125, USA ; [email protected]
- Alexei V. Filippenko
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of California , Berkeley, CA 94720-3411, USA
- Christoffer Fremling
- ORCiD
- Cahill Center for Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA 91125, USA ; [email protected]; Caltech Optical Observatories, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
- George Helou
- IPAC, California Institute of Technology , 1200 E. California Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
- Anna Ho
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, Cornell University , Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
- Jacob Jencson
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University , 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- David Jones
- ORCiD
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias , E-38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain; Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna , E-38206 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain; Nordic Optical Telescope , Rambla José Ana Fernández Pérez 7, E-38711, Breña Baja, Spain
- Russ R. Laher
- ORCiD
- IPAC, California Institute of Technology , 1200 E. California Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
- Frank J. Masci
- ORCiD
- IPAC, California Institute of Technology , 1200 E. California Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
- Kishore C. Patra
- ORCiD
- Nagaraj-Noll-Otellini Graduate Fellow, Department of Astronomy, University of California , Berkeley, CA 94720-3411, USA
- Josiah Purdum
- ORCiD
- Caltech Optical Observatories, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
- Alexander Reedy
- Cahill Center for Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA 91125, USA ; [email protected]
- Tawny Sit
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University , 140 West 18th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
- Yashvi Sharma
- ORCiD
- Cahill Center for Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA 91125, USA ; [email protected]
- Anastasios Tzanidakis
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Washington , Seattle, WA 98195, USA
- Stéfan J. van der Walt
- ORCiD
- Berkeley Institute for Data Science, University of California , Berkeley, USA
- Yuhan Yao
- ORCiD
- Cahill Center for Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA 91125, USA ; [email protected]
- Chaoran Zhang
- ORCiD
- Center for Gravitation, Cosmology, and Astrophysics, Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin , Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/acc2b9
- Journal volume & issue
-
Vol. 948,
no. 2
p. 137
Abstract
Luminous red novae (LRNe) are transients characterized by low luminosities and expansion velocities, and they are associated with mergers or common-envelope ejections in stellar binaries. Intermediate-luminosity red transients (ILRTs) are an observationally similar class with unknown origins, but they are generally believed to be either electron-capture supernovae in super-asymptotic giant branch stars or outbursts in dusty luminous blue variables (LBVs). In this paper, we present a systematic sample of eight LRNe and eight ILRTs detected as part of the Census of the Local Universe (CLU) experiment on the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). The CLU experiment spectroscopically classifies ZTF transients associated with nearby (<150 Mpc) galaxies, achieving 80% completeness for m _r < 20 mag. Using the ZTF-CLU sample, we derive the first systematic LRNe volumetric rate of ${7.8}_{-3.7}^{+6.5}\times {10}^{-5}$ Mpc ^−3 yr ^−1 in the luminosity range −16 ≤ M _r ≤ −11 mag. We find that, in this luminosity range, the LRN rate scales as ${dN}/{dL}\propto {L}^{-2.5\pm 0.3}$ —significantly steeper than the previously derived scaling of L ^−1.4±0.3 for lower-luminosity LRNe ( M _V ≥ −10 mag). The steeper power law for LRNe at high luminosities is consistent with the massive merger rates predicted by binary population synthesis models. We find that the rates of the brightest LRNe ( M _r ≤ −13 mag) are consistent with a significant fraction of them being progenitors of double compact objects that merge within a Hubble time. For ILRTs, we derive a volumetric rate of ${2.6}_{-1.4}^{+1.8}\times {10}^{-6}$ Mpc ^−3 yr ^−1 for M _r ≤ −13.5 mag, which scales as ${dN}/{dL}\propto {L}^{-2.5\pm 0.5}$ . This rate is ∼1%–5% of the local core-collapse supernova rate and is consistent with theoretical ECSN rate estimates.
Keywords
- Binary stars
- Common-envelope evolution
- Time-domain astronomy
- Transient sources
- Core-collapse supernovae
- Luminous blue variable stars
