A \textit{Swift} Fix for Nuclear Outbursts [HEAP]

http://arxiv.org/abs/2012.08521


In November 2020, the \textit{Swift} team announced an update to the UltraViolet and Optical Telescope calibration to correct for the loss of sensitivity over time. This correction affects observations in the three near ultraviolet (UV) filters, by up to 0.3 mag in some cases. As UV photometry is critical to characterizing tidal disruption events (TDEs) and other peculiar nuclear outbursts, we re-computed published \textit{Swift} data for TDEs and other singular nuclear outbursts with \textit{Swift} photometry in 2017 or later, as a service to the community. Using archival UV, optical, and infrared photometry we ran host SED fits for each host galaxy. From these, we computed synthetic host magnitudes and host-galaxy properties. We calculated host-subtracted magnitudes for each transient and computed blackbody fits. In addition to the nuclear outbursts, we include the ambiguous transient ATLAS18qqn (AT2018cow), which has been classifed as a potential TDE on an intermediate mass black hole. Finally, with updated bolometric light curves, we recover the relationship of \citet{hinkle20a}, where more luminous TDEs decay more slowly than less luminous TDEs with decreased scatter as compared to the original relationship.

Read this paper on arXiv…

J. Hinkle, T. Holoien, B. Shappee, et. al.
Thu, 17 Dec 20
54/85

Comments: 14 pages, 3 figures, and 7 tables. Will be submitted to AJ. Comments and suggestions welcome