Constraints on Late-Time Flaring from Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the Zwicky Transient Facility

@misc{jayaraman2026constraints,
  title = {{Constraints on Late-Time Flaring from Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the Zwicky Transient Facility}},
  author = {Rahul Jayaraman and Anna Y. Q. Ho and Michael M. Fausnaugh and Eran Ofek and Daniel A. Perley and Ruslan Konno and Martti Kristiansen and Tracy X. Chen and Michael W. Coughlin and Steven L. Groom and George Helou and K. -Ryan Hinds and Mansi M. Kasliwal and Zoë McGrath and Josiah N. Purdum and Argyro Sasli and Jesper Sollerman},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = jun,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2606.17129},
  eprint = {2606.17129},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.17129},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Constraints on Late-Time Flaring from Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the Zwicky Transient Facility
AU  - Rahul Jayaraman
AU  - Anna Y. Q. Ho
AU  - Michael M. Fausnaugh
AU  - Eran Ofek
AU  - Daniel A. Perley
AU  - Ruslan Konno
AU  - Martti Kristiansen
AU  - Tracy X. Chen
AU  - Michael W. Coughlin
AU  - Steven L. Groom
AU  - George Helou
AU  - K. -Ryan Hinds
AU  - Mansi M. Kasliwal
AU  - Zoë McGrath
AU  - Josiah N. Purdum
AU  - Argyro Sasli
AU  - Jesper Sollerman
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/15
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2606.17129
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.17129
AB  - The Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT) AT2022tsd exhibited minutes-timescale optical flares in the tens of days following the initial transient event, likely due to a central engine -- either an accreting black hole or a magnetar. In this paper, we use data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) to constrain the occurrence of similar flares in the 12 (of 14) known LFBOTs that had observational coverage with TESS from tens of days to thousands of days after the transient's initial emission. We find seven flare-like signals at the locations of four unique LFBOTs; all seven can likely be attributed to a solar system object (SSO) moving through the TESS aperture. Assuming all seven flares arise from SSOs, for the LFBOT AT2024qfm we rule out flaring with a similar timescale (40--65 d) and luminosity (νL_ν∼10^43 erg s^−1) as in AT2022tsd, while for AT2022tsd itself we rule out flares between 380--430 d after the initial transient that were as luminous as the earlier flares. This observation suggests that the engine power in AT2022tsd declined or shut off on a timescale of hundreds of days. We also find that there is no late-time activity detectable in TESS thousands of days after the prototype LFBOT, AT2018cow. We discuss our constraints on the duty cycle of such flaring and then present estimates for the number of minutes-duration flares detectable with ongoing and upcoming high-cadence (≪1 d) wide-field surveys.
ER  -