English

Five New Outbursting AM CVn Systems Discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2015-06-12 v1

Abstract

We present five new outbursting AM CVn systems and one candidate discovered as part of an ongoing search for such systems using the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF). This is the first large-area, systematic search for AM CVn systems using only large-amplitude photometric variability to select candidates. Three of the confirmed systems and the candidate system were discovered as part of the PTF transient search. Two systems were found as part of a search for outbursts through the PTF photometric database. We discuss the observed characteristics of each of these systems, including the orbital periods of two systems. We also consider the position of these systems, selected in a colour-independent survey, in colour-colour space and compare to systems selected solely by their colours. We find that the colours of our newly discovered systems do not differ significantly from those of previously known systems, but significant errors preclude a definitive answer.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1212.5312,
  title  = {Five New Outbursting AM CVn Systems Discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory},
  author = {David Levitan and Thomas Kupfer and Paul J. Groot and Shrinivas R. Kulkarni and Thomas A. Prince and Gregory V. Simonian and Iair Arcavi and Joshua S. Bloom and Russ Laher and Peter E. Nugent and Eran O. Ofek and Branimir Sesar and Jason Surace},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1212.5312},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

13 pages, 11 figures, accepted to MNRAS