ATClean: A Novel Method for Detecting Low-Luminosity Transients and Application to Pre-explosion Counterparts from SN 2023ixf
arxiv(2024)
摘要
In an effort to search for faint sources of emission over arbitrary
timescales, we present a novel method for analyzing forced photometry light
curves in difference imaging from optical surveys. Our method "ATLAS Clean” or
ATClean, utilizes the reported fluxes, uncertainties, and fits to the
point-spread function from difference images to quantify the statistical
significance of individual measurements. We apply this method to control light
curves across the image to determine whether any source of flux is present in
the data for a range of specific timescales. From ATLAS o-band imaging at the
site of the Type II supernova (SN) 2023ixf in M101 from 2015–2023, we show
that this method accurately reproduces the 3σ flux limits produced from
other, more computationally expensive methods. We derive limits for emission on
timescales of 5 days and 80-300 days at the site of SN 2023ixf, which are 19.8
and 21.3 mag, respectively. The latter limits rule out variability for
unextinguished red supergiants (RSG) with initial masses >22 M_⊙,
comparable to the most luminous predictions for the SN 2023ixf progenitor
system. We also compare our limits to short timescale outbursts, similar to
those expected for Type IIn SN progenitor stars or the Type II SN 2020tlf, and
rule out outburst ejecta masses of >0.021 M_⊙, much lower than the
inferred mass of circumstellar matter around SN 2023ixf in the literature. In
the future, these methods can be applied to any forced point-spread function
photometry on difference imaging from other surveys, such as Rubin optical
imaging.
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