X-Ray Transients in the Advanced LIGO/Virgo Horizon

Creators: Kanner, Jonah; Baker, John; Blackburn, Lindy; Camp, Jordan; Mooley, Kunal; Mushotzky, Richard; Ptak, Andy

Abstract

Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo will be all-sky monitors for merging compact objects within a few hundred megaparsecs. Finding the electromagnetic counterparts to these events will require an understanding of the transient sky at low redshift (z < 0.1). We performed a systematic search for extragalactic, low redshift, transient events in the XMM-Newton Slew Survey. In a flux limited sample, we found that highly variable objects comprised 10% of the sample, and that of these, 10% were spatially coincident with cataloged optical galaxies. This led to 4 × 10−4 transients per square degree above a flux threshold of 3 × 10^(−12) erg cm^−2 s^−1 (0.2–2 keV) which might be confused with LIGO/Virgo counterparts. This represents the first extragalactic measurement of the soft X-ray transient rate within the Advanced LIGO/Virgo horizon. Our search revealed six objects that were spatially coincident with previously cataloged galaxies, lacked evidence for optical active galactic nuclei, displayed high luminosities ~10^(43) erg s^−1, and varied in flux by more than a factor of 10 when compared with the ROSAT All-Sky Survey. At least four of these displayed properties consistent with previously observed tidal disruption events.

Additional Information

© 2013 American Astronomical Society. Received 2013 May 13; accepted 2013 July 12; published 2013 August 16. The authors are grateful for helpful discussions with Suvi Gezari, Judith Racusin, Brennan Hughey, Tracy Huard, and Sjoert van Velzan. We thank the anonymous referee for helpful comments. J.K. and L.B. were supported by appointments to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at GSFC, administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities through a contract with NASA. K.M. would like to thank Branimir Sesar, Eric Bellm, and Yi Cao for help obtaining the P200 spectra, and Assaf Horesh for work with the Keck Observatory. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This research has made use of data obtained from the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), provided by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Funding for the SDSS and SDSS-II has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, the Max Planck Society, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The SDSS Web site is http://www.sdss.org/. The SDSS is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions. The Participating Institutions are the American Museum of Natural History, Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, University of Basel, University of Cambridge, Case Western Reserve University, University of Chicago, Drexel University, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, the Korean Scientist Group, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (LAMOST), Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Max-Planck- Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), New Mexico State University, Ohio State University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the United States Naval Observatory, and the University of Washington.

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Submitted - 1305.5874v2.pdf

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