22 papers
Radiative Transfer Modeling of Stripped-envelope Supernovae II: Neural Network Emulation of Light Curves
S. Karthik Yadavalli, V. Ashley Villar, Maria R. Drout +3
We present the first neural-network emulator of stripped-envelope supernova (SESN) lightcurves, trained on a grid of 4499 light curves simulated with the radiative transfer (RT) co…
Compact Objects Merging with Stars as an Origin of Ultra-Long Gamma-Ray Bursts and Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients
V. Ashley Villar, Anya E. Nugent, Eric Burns +4
Ultra-long gamma-ray bursts (ULGRBs) and luminous fast blue optical transients (LFBOTs) are two rare classes of engine-driven transients whose physical connection remains unknown.…
First Results from the LSST Shadow Survey: The Restless Luminous Blue Variable AT2017des in the Virgo-Cluster Galaxy, NGC4532
Conor L. Ransome, Bhagya M. Subrayan, David J. Sand +66
The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will start in late-summer 2026, revolutionizing transient astronomy. Here, we present the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) Shadow Survey, which…
The Environments of Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients: Evidence for a Compact Object and Wolf-Rayet Star Merger Origin
Anya E. Nugent, V. Ashley Villar, Brian D. Metzger +5
We present a comprehensive analysis of the host galaxies of 11 luminous fast blue optical transients (LFBOTs). We model new and archival host photometry and spectroscopy with Prosp…
Photometry is all you need: supernova classification as a mixing problem
Ana SofÃa M. Uzsoy, V. Ashley Villar
In the era of large-scale photometric surveys, scalable and robust methods for classifying supernova (SN) populations are increasingly necessary. Often, spectroscopy is essential i…
JWST and Keck observations of the off-nuclear tidal disruption event TDE 2025abcr: An evolving reprocessing layer
Kishore C. Patra, Emily R. Liepold, Nicholas Earl +14
Off-nuclear tidal disruption events (TDEs) provide a rare probe of massive black holes (MBHs) outside galactic nuclei. Only a handful are known, including five X-ray-selected candi…