2013/05/31 by Jonah Kanner, John Baker, Lindy Blackburn +4 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Flux (metallurgy) #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #LIGO #Luminosity #ROSAT #Sky #Transient (computer programming) #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/774/1/63
10 pages, accepted for publication in ApJ
arxiv created 2013/07/12 · openalex publication_date 2013/08/16 · arxiv updated 2015/06/16 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
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.