A Bayesian method for detecting stellar flares
arXiv:1406.1712 · doi:10.1093/mnras/stu1889
Abstract
We present a Bayesian-odds-ratio-based algorithm for detecting stellar flares in light curve data. We assume flares are described by a model in which there is a rapid rise with a half-Gaussian profile, followed by an exponential decay. Our signal model also contains a polynomial background model. This is required to fit underlying light curve variations that are expected in the data, which could otherwise partially mimic a flare. We characterise the false alarm probability and efficiency of this method and compare it with a simpler thresholding method based on that used in Walkowicz et al (2011). We find our method has a significant increase in detection efficiency for low signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) flares. For a conservative false alarm probability our method can detect 95% of flares with S/N less than ~20, as compared to S/N of ~25 for the simpler method. As an example we have applied our method to a selection of stars in Kepler Quarter 1 data. The method finds 687 flaring stars with a total of 1873 flares after vetos have been applied. For these flares we have characterised their durations and and signal-to-noise ratios.
Accepted for MNRAS. The code used for the analysis can be found at https://github.com/BayesFlare/bayesflare/releases/tag/v1.0.0
References in corpus (31)
- A Tutorial on Principal Component Analysis
- Planetary Candidates Observed by Kepler, III: Analysis of the First 16 Months of Data
- Kepler Presearch Data Conditioning II - A Bayesian Approach to Systematic Error Correction
- An Observational Overview of Solar Flares
- Kepler Presearch Data Conditioning I - Architecture and Algorithms for Error Correction in Kepler Light Curves
- Rotation Periods of 34,030 Kepler Main-Sequence Stars: The Full Autocorrelation Sample
- Overview of the Kepler Science Processing Pipeline
- Kepler Eclipsing Binary Stars. I. Catalog and Principal Characterization of 1879 Eclipsing Binaries in the First Data Release
- Superflares on Solar Type Stars Observed with Kepler I. Statistical Properties of Superflares
- Global Energetics of Thirty-Eight Large Solar Eruptive Events
- On the Estimation of Confidence Intervals for Binomial Population Proportions in Astronomy: The Simplicity and Superiority of the Bayesian Approach
- Bayesian Blocks, A New Method to Analyze Structure in Photon Counting Data
- Rotation and differential rotation of active Kepler stars
- Initial Characteristics of Kepler Long Cadence Data For Detecting Transiting Planets
- Time-Resolved Properties and Global Trends in dMe Flares from Simultaneous Photometry and Spectra
- Photometric Variability in Kepler Target Stars. II. An Overview of Amplitude, Periodicity, and Rotation in First Quarter Data
- White-light flares on cool stars in the Kepler Quarter 1 Data
- Kepler Eclipsing Binary Stars. III. Classification of Kepler Eclipsing Binary Light Curves with Locally Linear Embedding
- Microflares and the Statistics of X-ray Flares
- A White Light Megaflare on the dM4.5e Star YZ CMi
- Photometric Variability in Kepler Target Stars: The Sun Among Stars -- A First Look
- M Dwarfs in SDSS Stripe 82: Photometric Light Curves and Flare Rate Analysis
- M Dwarf Flares from Time-Resolved SDSS Spectra
- Statistics of Stellar Variability from Kepler - I: Revisiting Quarter 1 with an Astrophysically Robust Systematics Correction
- Astrophysically robust systematics removal using variational inference: application to the first month of Kepler data
- An Evidence Based Search Method For Gravitational Waves From Neutron Star Ring-downs
- Bayesian detection of unmodeled bursts of gravitational waves
- Robust Bayesian detection of unmodelled bursts
- DRAFTS: A Deep, Rapid Archival Flare Transient Search in the Galactic Bulge
- The statistical analyses of flares detected in B band photometry of UV Ceti type stars
- White Light Flare Continuum Observations with ULTRACAM
Cited by in corpus (13)
- Stellar flares observed in long cadence data from the Kepler mission
- Flares, Rotation, and Planets of the AU Mic System from TESS Observations
- Activity Analyses for Solar-Type Stars Observed With Kepler. I. Proxies of Magnetic Activity
- Simultaneous Multiwavelength Flare Observations of EV Lacertae
- Statistical Signatures of Nanoflare Activity. I. Monte Carlo Simulations and Parameter-space Exploration
- A low-mass eclipsing binary within the fully convective zone from the NGTS
- Main-sequence star super-flares based on entire Kepler data
- Stellar flare morphology with TESS across the main sequence
- Stellar Flares in the CSTAR Field: Results from the 2008 Data Set
- Superflares on solar-like stars: A new method for identifying the true flare sources in photometric surveys
- Spectroscopic observations of flares and superflares on AU Mic
- On the use of variability time-scales as an early classifier of radio transients and variables
- FALCO: a Foundation model of Astronomical Light Curves for time dOmain astronomy