The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Flux Upper Limits from a Targeted Search for Extragalactic Transients

Abstract

We have performed targeted searches of known extragalactic transient events at millimetre wavelengths using nine seasons (2013--2021) of 98, 150, and 229\,GHz Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) observations that mapped $\sim 40$ per cent of the sky for most of the data volume. Our data cover 88 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), 12 tidal disruption events (TDEs) and 203 other transients, including supernovae (SNe). We stack our ACT observations to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the maps. In all cases but one, we do not detect these transients in the ACT data. The single candidate detection (event AT2019ppm), seen at $\sim 5\sigma$ significance in our data, appears to be due to active galactic nuclei (AGN) activity in the host galaxy coincident with a transient alert. For each source in our search we provide flux upper limits. For example, the medians for the 95 per cent confidence upper limits at 98\,GHz are $15$, $18$, and $16$\,mJy for GRBs, SNe, and TDEs respectively, in the first month after discovery. The projected sensitivity of future wide-area cosmic microwave background (CMB) surveys should be sufficient to detect many of these events using the methods described in this paper.

arXiv comment14 pages, 7 figures, 8 tables. The full tables of flux upper limits for individual transients are available at https://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/act/actadv_targeted_transient_constraints_2023_info.html. Accepted for publication by MNRAS

References in corpus (58)

• SciPy 1.0--Fundamental Algorithms for Scientific Computing in Python
• Array Programming with NumPy
• Spectra and Light Curves of Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglows
• The Simons Observatory: Science goals and forecasts
• A very energetic supernova associated with the gamma-ray burst of 29 March 2003
• Gamma-Ray Bursts and the Fireball Model
• The Temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• The eROSITA X-ray telescope on SRG
• The Zwicky Transient Facility: Science Objectives
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: DR4 Maps and Cosmological Parameters
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog: twelfth data release
• Tidal Disruption Events
• The Birth of a Relativistic Outflow in the Unusual γ-ray Transient Swift J164449.3+573451
• An Open Catalog for Supernova Data
• The SRG X-ray orbital observatory, its telescopes and first scientific results
• Seventeen Tidal Disruption Events from the First Half of ZTF Survey Observations: Entering a New Era of Population Studies
• Advanced ACTPol Cryogenic Detector Arrays and Readout
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A Catalog of > 4000 Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Galaxy Clusters
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: The polarization-sensitive ACTPol instrument
• Discovery, Progenitor & Early Evolution of a Stripped Envelope Supernova iPTF13bvn
• The Fast, Luminous Ultraviolet Transient AT2018cow: Extreme Supernova, or Disruption of a Star by an Intermediate-Mass Black Hole?
• The Afterglow of GRB 130427A from 1 to 10^16 GHz
• Discovery of an outflow from radio observations of the tidal disruption event ASASSN-14li
• Radio Properties of Tidal Disruption Events
• A radio jet from the optical and x-ray bright stellar tidal disruption flare ASASSN-14li
• Interacting Supernovae: Types IIn and Ibn
• Radio Monitoring of the Tidal Disruption Event Swift J164449.3+573451. I. Jet Energetics and the Pristine Parsec-Scale Environment of a Supermassive Black Hole
• AT2018cow: a luminous millimeter transient
• A Reverse Shock in GRB 130427A
• A Deep Search for Prompt Radio Emission from Thermonuclear Supernovae with the Very Large Array
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: DR5 maps of 18,000 square degrees of the microwave sky from ACT 2008-2018 data
• Transient processing and analysis using $\text{AMPEL}$: Alert Management, Photometry and Evaluation of Lightcurves
• A Search for Extragalactic Fast Blue Optical Transients in ZTF and the Rate of AT2018cow-like Transients
• An Early & Comprehensive Millimeter and Centimeter Wave and X-ray Study of Supernova 2011dh: A Non-Equipartition Blastwave Expanding into A Massive Stellar Wind
• Radio Observations of an Ordinary Outflow from the Tidal Disruption Event AT2019dsg
• The Radio Luminosity-Risetime Function of Core-Collapse Supernovae
• ALMA Detection of a Linearly Polarized Reverse Shock in GRB 190114C
• Pre-ALMA observations of GRBs in the mm/submm range
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Beam Measurements and the Microwave Brightness Temperatures of Uranus and Saturn
• First ALMA Light Curve Constrains Refreshed Reverse Shocks and Jet Magnetization in GRB 161219B
• Characterization of the Mid-Frequency Arrays for Advanced ACTPol
• Circumstellar interaction in supernovae in dense environments - an observational perspective
• The Simons Observatory Large Aperture Telescope Receiver
• A radio-detected Type Ia supernova with helium-rich circumstellar material
• Detection of Galactic and Extragalactic Millimeter-Wavelength Transient Sources with SPT-3G
• The Deepest Radio Observations of Nearby Type IA Supernovae: Constraining Progenitor Types and Optimizing Future Surveys
• The final months of massive star evolution from the circumstellar environment around SN Ic 2020oi
• Millimeter Transient Point Sources in the SPTpol 100 Square Degree Survey
• Catching jetted tidal disruption events early in millimetre
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Detection of mm-wave transient sources
• ALMA Polarimetry of AT2018cow
• Long-term observations of Uranus and Neptune at 90 GHz with the IRAM 30m telescope - (1985 -- 2005)
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A search for Planet 9
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Measurement and Analysis of 1D Beams for DR4
• Extragalactic Millimeter Transients in the Era of Next Generation CMB Surveys
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Systematic Transient Search of 3-Day Maps
• Models of Millimeter and Radio Emission from Interacting Supernovae
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Millimeter Observations of a Population of Asteroids or: ACTeroids

Cited by in corpus (3)

• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Systematic Transient Search of Single Observation Maps
• Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Observations of supermassive black hole binary candidates. Strong sinusoidal variations at 95, 147 and 225 GHz in PKS 2131$-$021 and PKS J0805$-$0111
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Machine Learning Driven Tools for Detecting Millimeter Sources in Timestream Pre-processing