Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Cross-listed from astro-ph.IM
The Cross-Survey Decade: A Call to Action
Gioia Rau, Robert Benjamin, Federica Bianco et al. (+24 more)
By 2027, three flagship wide-field surveys will be operating simultaneously from ground and space, observing overlapping sky and representing more than $6 billion in US and European public investment. Together they will produce overlapping petabyte-scale
datasets across thousands of square degrees. This is a different class of challenge: the observations are no longer the bottleneck; realizing their joint scientific return now depends on shared computational infrastructure and coordination. Decades of community studies show that combining these
datasets does more than improve precision. For science ranging from weak
lensing to transient discovery and Galactic-plane astronomy, joint processing and analysis can unlock capabilities no single survey provides alone. Yet the required infrastructure – joint pixel-level processing, cross-calibration and validation, interoperable data access, and the people to build and sustain it – falls outside any single mission or institution's mandate. We issue a call to action for cross-survey science infrastructure, built around four pillars: (1) joint pixel-level processing and validation; (2) an AI-ready data substrate for scientific foundation models; (3) standardized, interoperable data access across surveys, democratizing participation in astrophysical discovery; and (4) dedicated personnel and career pathways. We outline concrete steps for policymakers, agencies, observatories, universities, the research community, and philanthropy, and argue that the moment to act is now, while foundational technical choices can still be aligned at a fraction of the cost of reconciling them later.
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All authors Gioia Rau, Robert Benjamin, Federica Bianco, Ranga-Ram Chary, Andy Connolly, Cecilia Garraffo, Suvi Gezari, Leanne P. Guy, Željko Ivezić, Stephanie Juneau, Vicky Kalogera, Mansi M. Kasliwal, François Lanusse, Zack Li, Rachel Mandelbaum, Peter Melchior, Stella Offner, Antonella Palmese, Jason Rhodes, Edward Schlafly, Kartik Sheth, Rachel Street, Michael Troxel, Tony Tyson, Beth Willman, Michael Wood-Vasey, Yuanyuan Zhang
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
PowerFull: fast and accurate computation of the relativistic angular galaxy power spectrum including local primordial non-Gaussianity
Gregory Lukens and Donghui Jeong
Current and forthcoming wide-field
galaxy surveys, such as SPHEREx and Euclid, provide a unique opportunity to probe the ultra-large scales of structure formation, where primordial non-Gaussianity, often parameterized by $f_\text{NL}$, is expected to leave its most detectable imprint. At the same time, these surveys inevitably enter regimes where relativistic and wide-angle effects become significant, requiring careful modeling to extract unbiased cosmological information. We address these challenges by applying the total-angular-momentum (TAM) formalism to describe
redshift-space clustering beyond the flat-sky approximation. The standard
Fourier-mode description, which characterizes distortions by the angle between a mode and a line of sight, becomes ill-defined over wide fields, whereas the TAM basis naturally separates radial and angular contributions and incorporates the relevant relativistic effects. Within this framework, we provide a new parameterization of wide-angle predictions that can be compared directly with survey data. We then introduce PowerFull, a modification of the Julia-based 2-FAST package, which enables efficient computation of the full relativistic angular power spectrum. Finally, using Fisher information
matrix-based analyses, we show that a survey like SPHEREx reaches $\sigma(f_\text{NL}) \sim 1$, but that neglecting the relativistic and wide-angle contributions shifts the recovered $f_\text{NL}$ by an amount of order its own uncertainty: at this precision the inferred value is biased unless the clustering is modeled consistently.
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Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
CosmoPyro: Gradients for Gravitational-Wave Cosmology
Konstantin Leyde and Elena Colangeli
Gravitational-wave (GW) observations of stellar-mass compact binary coalescences directly measure the source luminosity distance. Combined with the source
redshift, these measurements constrain the current expansion rate of the Universe, the Hubble constant, $H_0$, or $h=H_0 / [100 \,{\rm km \,s^{-1} \, Mpc^{-1}}]$. For most GW signals no electromagnetic
redshift measurement is expected, but the GW signal itself depends on the redshifted (detector-frame) masses. Assuming a source-frame mass distribution therefore enables a
redshift estimate for each source. Combining the
redshift estimates with the distance measurements provides a weak constraint on $H_0$ for each individual source that tightens with the number of sources in the catalog. However, the shape of the source-frame mass distribution is not known a priori, and previous work has relied on parametric models (piecewise power-laws with Gaussian components), and one-dimensional Gaussian processes. Here, we introduce CosmoPyro, a fully differentiable hierarchical
Bayesian inference code that models the mass distribution using either one- or two-dimensional Gaussian processes. With the latest GW transient catalog (GWTC-5) we find $h = 0.66^{+0.17}_{-0.20}$ and $h = 0.57^{+0.20}_{-0.15}$ (median with $1\sigma$ uncertainty), for the one- and two-dimensional case, respectively. Despite the noticeably different inferred mass distributions, both models yield $H_0$ values consistent with the latest LVK measurements within $1 \sigma$. While our main results marginalize over the Gaussian-process power-spectrum hyperparameters, the measurement is also robust against fixing these hyperparameters over a range comparable to their measured uncertainty.
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Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Testing MOND-like modifications to gravity using growth-rate measurements and one-loop corrections to the matter power spectrum
Gabriel Hartmann, Emanuelly Silva and Rafael C. Nunes
We develop a perturbative framework for structure formation in a broad class of MOND-like theories characterized by a generalized nonlinear Poisson equation. We derive the modified
evolution equations governing matter perturbations and obtain the corresponding linear growth equation, extending the analysis into the mildly nonlinear regime through one-loop corrections to the matter power spectrum. Beyond the theoretical framework, we perform a cosmological analysis based on two phenomenological scenarios: one parametrized by a quantity controlling the degree of nonlinearity in the generalized Poisson equation, and another describing the interplay between the MOND acceleration scale and the cosmological acceleration associated with the background expansion. We constrain these scenarios using recent measurements of the growth rate of structure, $f\sigma_8$, DESI-DR2 baryon acoustic oscillation data, and Type Ia
supernova compilations. We find no statistically significant evidence for departures from the standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmology. The inferred constraints are fully consistent with the GR + $\Lambda$CDM scenario within the current observational uncertainties. At nonlinear scales, we note that MOND-like modifications can alter $P_{\rm NL}(k)$ and leave signatures that current and future high-precision large-scale-structure observations may probe. Our results establish a systematic connection between MOND-like gravitational dynamics and large-scale structure observations, providing a consistent framework to assess the phenomenological viability of MOND-inspired modifications of
gravity in a cosmological context.
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Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Mapping the Information Geometry of an Unresolved Dark Matter Population using a Differentiable Strong Lensing Simulator
Alexandre Adam
Strong gravitational
lensing is a unique probe of the matter power spectrum on small scales, where the abundance of dark matter subhalos in
galaxies could be used to distinguish the predictions of the concordance cold dark matter model from alternatives such as warm dark matter. Extracting this signal poses major computational challenges, since perturbations of the
lensing potential induced by substructure can be degenerate with both the macro-model of the lens and highly flexible models of the background source. Here, we introduce a framework to quantify these degeneracies using a differentiable strong-
lensing simulator. Substructure is represented in a spectral basis confined to an annular domain surrounding the lensed image, allowing signals from a population of NFW subhalos to be encoded in a finite vector space. We then use the Fisher
matrix to determine how much information about substructure is absorbed by nuisance components of the model. We find that macro-model degeneracies are largely confined to low-order perturbations of the
lensing potential, while degeneracies with the source model can strongly suppress sensitivity across a broad range of scales as the expressivity of the source model is increased. Finally, we introduce the Fisher Graph
Laplacian prior as a diagnostic tool to study how the internal degeneracies of the source model can be used to regulate the sensitivity of the data to an unresolved population of dark matter subhalos.
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Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Cross-listed from hep-ph
Towards Quantum-Dot Detectors as Barcodes for Dark Matter Interactions
Marek Matas, Andrea Gallo Rosso, Antonio Cammarata et al. (+6 more)
Quantum dots are tunable
semiconductor nanocrystals that can be produced at industrial scales. We present the first ab initio calculation of the scattering of dark matter on electrons bound in
quantum dots. The momentum-dependence of a
quantum dot's electronic response depends on its morphology and on the dark matter mass, interaction operator, mediator coupling, and mediator mass. Therefore, the relative rates across an array of distinct
quantum dot targets form a “barcode” that carries information about the nature of the dark matter interaction. We project the sensitivity of a detector concept in which a collection of independent target subunits, each loaded with silicon
quantum dots of a particular morphology, are read out by Skipper CCDs. Given a future signal, this barcode could discriminate between interaction operators and mediator types. We quantify the discrimination power for a
benchmark pair of models as a function of readout noise and exposure.
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All authors Marek Matas, Andrea Gallo Rosso, Antonio Cammarata, Nora Hoch, Carlos Blanco, Jan Conrad, Rouven Essig, Tim Linden, Lindley Winslow
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Imprints of Mass Accretion History on Galaxy Cluster Morphology
Kabelo Tsiane, Camille Avestruz, Elena Rasia et al. (+6 more)
Variations in dynamical states of
galaxy clusters can introduce biases and scatter in observable-mass relations. The dynamical state of a cluster is an emergent feature of its mass
accretion history (MAH), it is therefore useful to constrain the MAH of the cluster. In this work, we characterize 305 massive clusters from The300 project by connecting features from their projected stellar distributions to their mass
accretion histories (MAH). As a baseline, we first correlate host dark matter
halo dynamical state indicators at $z=0$ with their MAH via the Spearman rank correlation coefficient $\rho_{\mathrm{sp}}$. Both substructure mass fraction and center-of-mass offset measurements correlate strongly with the MAH measured between $0.1\lesssim z\lesssim 1$. We repeat this exercise with morphological measurements of projected stellar density maps, many of which exhibit moderate correlation strength with different times in the MAH. Broadly, core morphological measurements ($r \leq 30\,\mathrm{kpc}$) correlate better with early-time MAH. Core-excised ($50\,\mathrm{kpc} \leq r \leq 1\,\mathrm{Mpc}$) morphological measurements correlate better with late-time MAH. We further quantify the MAH prediction power of both traditional dynamical state indicators and morphological parameters using Multivariable Conditional Abundance Matching (MultiCAM). MultiCAM employs simple rank-ordering operations, making it straightforward to translate to observed
datasets. We find reasonable ($\rho_{\mathrm{sp}} \geq 0.6$) performance for predictions of the mass fraction between $1\lesssim z\lesssim 0.1$, though with notable information loss when using projected quantities. In one example application of our methodology, we use the coefficients of the MultiCAM models to select subsamples of
galaxy clusters that have accreted more (or less) of their $z = 0$ mass budget over a given time frame.
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All authors Kabelo Tsiane, Camille Avestruz, Elena Rasia, Roan Haggar, Jesse B. Golden-Marx, Guillaume Mahler, Elizaveta Sazonova, James Taylor, Massimo Meneghetti
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Cross-listed from hep-th
A compact analytic formula for the one-loop triangle cosmological correlator
Johannes Henn, Jiajie Mei and Qinglin Yang
We derive a compact analytic formula for the one-loop triangle correlator of conformally coupled scalars in de Sitter space. The result is organised as six leading-singularity prefactors multiplying pure weight-two functions of the six energy variables. It contains forty-two dilogarithms, compared with approximately one hundred and twenty in the previously known closed-form representation, and requires no auxiliary regulator. The dilogarithms occur in Galois-conjugate pairs, making each contribution separately real throughout the physical region. We validate the result numerically. Moreover, we show that its symbol can be derived directly from the dressed integral representation or, independently, bootstrapped from Landau singularities and general consistency conditions. Finally, we show that the correlator (in a suitable normalization) is a Stieltjes function of each squared energy separately and is jointly completely monotone in all six squared energies. These structures suggest a route towards higher-point one-loop cosmological correlators.
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Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
eROSITA cosmology with galaxy groups: Hot gas budget out to the virial radius
H. Khalil, A. Finoguenov, D. Eckert et al. (+4 more)
Non-gravitational processes that expel hot gas beyond the virial regions of groups and clusters of
galaxies, known collectively as baryonic feedback, play a key role in reshaping the matter distribution of the Universe on Mpc scales. We use eROSITA observations of a complete sample of 25
galaxy groups selected from the first public release of the eROSITA-DE data (eRASS1) and identified with the Two Micron
Redshift Survey optical group catalogue (2MRS). We extract and fit surface brightness (SBx) profiles and present hot gas mass and hot gas fraction profiles out to $R_{200}$. We perform a
Bayesian analysis of $M_{\mathrm{gas}}-M_{\mathrm{tot}}$, $L_{\mathrm{X}}-M_{\mathrm{tot}}$, and $L_{\mathrm{X}}-M_{\mathrm{gas}}$ relations, taking into account the aperture covariance effects. At $R_{500}$, we report uniformly flat SBx profiles with a mean $\beta$ parameter of $0.38 \pm0.04$, steepening to $\beta = 0.76\pm0.19$ beyond $R_{500}$. We measure a sub-
cosmic hot gas fraction at the median mass of our sample $M_{500} = 2.54\times10^{13}M_{\odot}$ of $ f_{\mathrm{gas,500}} = 4.32\pm0.42\%$. Similarly, at $R_{200}$ and the median mass $M_{\mathrm{ 200}} = 3.69\times10^{13}M_{\odot}$, we obtain $f_{\mathrm{gas,200}}=5.78\pm0.69\%$. Our $f_{\mathrm{gas}}-M_{\mathrm{tot}}$ and $L_{\mathrm{X}}-M_{\mathrm{tot}}$ relations show significant deviations from the predictions of the strong feedback variants of the FLAMINGO simulation ($2.5\sigma$ to $8.0\sigma$ tension), while fiducial FLAMINGO and BAHAMAS provide the closest match to our measurements. Using our measured baryon fractions and the SP(k) model, we infer a $10\%-15\%$ reduction in the matter power spectrum at $k = 5\ h\ \mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ relative to a dark matter-only universe, in agreement with fiducial FLAMINGO and BAHAMAS, while revealing a growing tension on smaller scales with the strong feedback variants.
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All authors H. Khalil, A. Finoguenov, D. Eckert, R. Seppi, E. Tempel, L. Lovisari, F. Gastaldello
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Large eROSITA X-ray sources as 2MRS galaxy groups
A. Finoguenov, R. Seppi, D. Eckert et al. (+5 more)
We aim to exploit the large area coverage, good sensitivity, and low instrumental background of eROSITA to detect the faint surface brightness emission of
galaxy groups from the Two Micron All Sky Survey
Redshift Survey (2MRS). Using the data from eROSITA-DE Data Release 1, including images, exposure maps, and local background maps, we performed a wavelet decomposition of image mosaics in the 0.6–2.3 keV band at angular scales of 1/8-16'. We adopted 8-16' scales for source detection and 2-4' scales to improve catalog purity. A novel identification method based on the ranked partial Hausdorff distance fully exploits the X-ray image and group membership information. Random catalogs were used to control match purity, and the identification threshold was chosen to maximize the catalog size at a fixed purity. {We present a catalog of 619 X-ray
galaxy groups with 80% purity, and define subsamples with 90% and 97% purity. Bright sources closely match the AXES-2MRS catalog (which is based on ROSAT All Sky Survey data analysis on spatial scales of 12-24'). The X-ray luminosity function of our groups agrees with previous studies down to 5.e41 erg/s. Using dynamical mass estimates, we find that the X-ray counterpart completeness for groups with >=4 members exceeds 60% for masses >2e13 Msun. We modeled the 2MRS group catalog and justify the inclusion of two-member groups in the identification. This study demonstrates that large X-ray sources on spatial scales relevant for cosmological studies of baryonic distributions can be reliably detected and identified using nearby
galaxy group catalogs.
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All authors A. Finoguenov, R. Seppi, D. Eckert, H. Khalil, J. Kosowski, E. Tempel, F. Gastaldello, L. Lovisari
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Cross-listed from hep-ph
VERaiPHY – Validation & Evaluation for Robust AI in PHYsics
Gaia Grosso, Ramon Winterhalder, Lydia Brenner et al. (+2 more)
Modern machine learning is leading to substantial gains in precision, flexibility, and computational efficiency in fundamental physics. Statistical validation, uncertainty quantification, and robustness assessment are less systematically addressed. The VERaiPHY initiative (Validation & Evaluation for Robust AI in PHYsics) is a series of articles developed within the PHYSTAT programme, aimed at establishing statistical standards for the development, evaluation, and deployment of ML techniques. Each article focuses on a specific methodological domain from a statistics perspective and clarifies statistical questions, tests, and the interpretation of results. This opening article establishes the probabilistic, statistical, and machine learning foundations that the later contributions assume, together with the notation used throughout.
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All authors Gaia Grosso, Ramon Winterhalder, Lydia Brenner, Louis Lyons, Tilman Plehn
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Cross-listed from hep-ph
An axion constraint from the diffuse supernova neutrino background indicated by Super-Kamiokande
Kanji Mori, Tomoya Takiwaki, Kazunori Kohri et al. (+1 more)
Recently, the Super-Kamiokande Collaboration reported an indication of the diffuse
supernova neutrino background (DSNB) with a statistical significance of $2.6\sigma$. Motivated by this possible discovery, we investigate the impact of
axion cooling on the DSNB flux on the basis of long-term
neutrino-radiation hydrodynamic simulations. We compare the observed flux and our models and obtain a $1\sigma$ upper limit $|g_{ap}|<1.3\times10^{-9}$ on the
axion-
proton coupling constant, which is comparable to the conventional limit based on the SN 1987A
neutrino burst. In contrast to the SN 1987A bound, the DSNB constraint does not rely on the properties of a single observed
supernova, because the DSNB represents the cumulative
neutrino emission from a
cosmic population of core-collapse events. More generally, this approach can be applied to other feebly interacting particles that modify protoneutron-
star cooling.
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All authors Kanji Mori, Tomoya Takiwaki, Kazunori Kohri, Masamitsu Mori
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Infrared Lines from Sterile-Neutrino Transition Magnetic Moments at JWST
Hriditi Howlader, Alekha C. Nayak and Tripurari Srivastava
We investigate infrared line signatures from radiatively decaying sterile-
neutrino dark matter using publicly available JWST/NIRSpec IFU blank-sky observations. The main signal considered is the sterile-to-sterile transition $N_1\to N_2\gamma$, induced by the transition
magnetic dipole coefficient $d_{NN\gamma}$, with $m_1>m_2$. In contrast to ordinary two-
photon decays of
axion-like or Majoron-like particles, the observed
photon energy is not fixed by the full dark matter mass, but by the small mass splitting $\Delta m=m_1-m_2$. Thus, a keV-scale sterile-
neutrino dark matter state can generate an eV-scale infrared
photon line in the JWST band. We construct a $\chi^2$-based line-search analysis using the NIRSpec IFU $\rm F170LP$-$\rm G235M$ blank-sky data toward $\rm GN\text{-}z11$, modelling the smooth continuum with a cubic spline and including the Milky Way
halo decay flux. In the absence of a significant excess, we derive projected limits on $d_{NN\gamma}$ and on the decay width $\Gamma_{N_1\to N_2\gamma}$ for $0.1~{\rm eV}\lesssim\Delta m\lesssim1~{\rm eV}$. For a sterile component saturating the dark matter abundance, the strongest sensitivity reaches $d_{NN\gamma}\lesssim7\times10^{-14}~{\rm GeV}^{-1}$ and $\Gamma_{N_1\to N_2\gamma}\lesssim10^{-25}~{\rm s}^{-1}$. We also include a minimal anomalous-Majoron
benchmark, $\omega\to\gamma\gamma$, obtaining JWST sensitivity to $\lambda_{\omega\gamma\gamma}\sim10^{-11}$-$10^{-9}~{\rm GeV}^{-1}$ for $m_\omega\sim0.6$-$1~{\rm eV}$.
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Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
A stochastic forward model for the intergalactic dispersion-measure distribution of Fast Radio Bursts
Jéferson A. S. Fortunato, Valerio Marra, Wiliam S. Hipólito-Ricaldi et al. (+1 more)
Fast
Radio Bursts probe ionised baryons through their observed dispersion measures. We present \turbofrb, a semi-analytic
stochastic forward model for the intergalactic dispersion-measure distribution, $P({\rm DM}_{\rm IGM}\mid z)$, that resolves the diffuse IGM,
halo, and filament contributions as explicit physical channels, with the
halo and filament encounter rates coupled by a latent line-of-sight environmental variable. Only four effective parameters are calibrated against hydrodynamical ray-traced IllustrisTNG
benchmark. The model matches the
benchmark mean DM to the percent level and yields a per-
redshift Jensen-Shannon divergence of at most $5\times10^{-3}$ across $z = 0.5$-$2.5$. The per-sightline channel decomposition makes explicit what closed-form parametric descriptions cannot show: the diffuse IGM sets the body of the distribution, while
halos and filaments populate the high-DM tail. Applied to representative localised FRBs, the forward likelihood quantifies host-excess events independently of their astrophysical signatures and recovers the injected $H_0$ within $1\sigma$ in a closed-loop consistency test. The \turbofrb package is available at \href{https://github.com/jefersonfortunato/turbofrb}{github.com/jefersonfortunato/turbofrb}.
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All authors Jéferson A. S. Fortunato, Valerio Marra, Wiliam S. Hipólito-Ricaldi, Amanda Weltman
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Dianoga simulations of galaxy clusters and groups: Properties of the baryonic components
Stefano Borgani, Alice Damiano, Elena Rasia et al. (+12 more)
We introduce the Dianoga set of cosmological simulations of
galaxy clusters and groups, specifically aimed at studying the impact of the implementation of AGN feedback and
star formation. Using the OpenGadget3 code, we carry out simulations of 28 regions centred on massive
galaxy clusters, and of a cosmological box. This generates a sample of 293
halos with M_{200}> 1.5 x 10^{13} M_{\odot}. Parameters of AGN feedback in the reference implementation were minimally calibrated exclusively to match the local relation between SMBH masses and stellar masses of host
galaxies. Simulations are compared to observed
galaxy stellar mass function (GSMF), stellar mass fraction in clusters and groups, BCG masses, scaling relations between ICM/IGM properties and profiles of their thermodynamical properties. In the appendix, we show how results vary as we modify the reference feedback model in six alternative configurations. Our reference model predicts a GSMF in general agreement with observations, albeit overestimated in the high end. BCG stellar masses and mass fractions are higher than observed in massive clusters, while being closer to observations for groups. Predicted properties of the ICM/IGM are in general agreement with observations, with the core regions of simulated clusters having
entropy and temperature profiles that are slightly less "cool-cored" than observed. A comparison with other implementations of AGN feedback highlights that models including thermal evaporation of the sub-resolution interstellar medium succeed to bring BCG masses and stellar mass fractions closer to observation, and to increase the cool-coreness of simulated clusters. Our results demonstrate that the details of the interface between AGN energy injection and the sub-resolution interstellar medium model are at least as critical as the total feedback efficiency itself.
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All authors Stefano Borgani, Alice Damiano, Elena Rasia, Tiago Castro, Michela Esposito, Ilaria Marini, Giuseppe Murante, Milena Valentini, Veronica Biffi, Klaus Dolag, Gian Luigi Granato, Antonio Ragagnin, Cinthia Ragone-Figueroa, Alex Saro, Luca Tornatore
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Cross-listed from hep-ph
Seeding baryonic dark matter
Domenec Espriu
It has been proposed that primordial
quark pellets or PQPs –ultra-dense
quark-matter mini-
stars– formed at $T\sim 1$ GeV may be a good candidate accounting for the dark matter of the universe. If correct, dark matter would consist of very compact objects with a maximum mass of $10^{-2} \ M_\odot$ and radii of approximately 100 m, although smaller objects would be much more abundant and encompass the bulk of the dark matter content. Here we describe a viable formation mechanism based on the enhancement of the local baryon density when supra-horizon Peccei-Quinn domain walls formed at an earlier epoch sweep and accumulate
quarks and gluons before entering the horizon. Assuming an efficient baryon concentration by contracting Peccei-Quinn domain walls, we derive the resulting primordial
quark pellet mass spectrum, minimum mass and cosmological abundance.
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Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Cross-listed from astro-ph.HE
AT 2020afjz (TSS2020a): The First Fast Extragalactic Transient Discovered by TESS
Ryan Ridden-Harper, Hugh Roxburgh, Clarinda Montilla et al. (+13 more)
We report the discovery of AT 2020afjz (TSS2020a): the first hour-scale extragalactic transient discovered in optical wavelengths whose complete
evolution – from explosion onset to decay – is temporally resolved, and the first such transient discovered by TESS. AT 2020afjz was identified as a $>10\sigma$ detection in the pilot HiLaTS program run within the TESSELLATE Sky Survey, which blindly searches for transient phenomena in TESS data with the TESSELLATE pipeline. Through cross-matching with legacy imaging, we associate it with DES J042144.37$-$383311.3, a member of an interacting
galaxy pair at $z_{\rm phot}=0.67^{+0.07}_{-0.10}$. While AT 2020afjz is similar in duration and brightness to GRB afterglows, it exhibits a slow rise time of $\sim1$ hr and lasts for only 2.4 hr above the half-max brightness; modeling the TESS light curve with VegasAfterglow finds that it is best described as either an on-axis "dirty-fireball" or off-axis orphan afterglow. Each of these rare classifications hinge upon a non-detection at gamma-ray energies, but as Fermi-GBM was Earth-occulted at the time of explosion, AT 2020afjz's gamma-quiet nature cannot be definitively confirmed. Regardless, AT 2020afjz demonstrates TESS's power to discover fast extragalactic transients, and heralds a new population awaiting discovery with TESSELLATE.
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All authors Ryan Ridden-Harper, Hugh Roxburgh, Clarinda Montilla, Lancia Hubley, James Freeburn, Brayden Leicester, Andrew Moore, Zachary G. Lane, Jaime Luisi, Koji Shukawa, Armin Rest, Jeff Cooke, Michele T. Bannister, Lilly Fox, Tait Keller, Qinan Wang