Orateur
Description
Tidal disruption events (TDEs) refer to the destruction of a star by the tidal forces around a black hole, leading to outbursts that can last for months. Although modern optical time-domain surveys have substantially expanded the known TDE sample, these events remain rare. Further increasing the sample is crucial for advancing our understanding of the underlying physics, making TDE discovery a key science goal for surveys like Rubin.
Efficiently identifying TDEs within the vast alert streams generated by such surveys requires automated, robust, and reliable classification pipelines capable of selecting promising candidates in real time.
In this presentation, I will introduce a module within the Fink alert broker that we developed to identify TDEs during their rising phase. It currently operates on ZTF data and will soon be adapted for Rubin. It autonomously filters the alert stream and reports a small list of candidates every night through a user-friendly interface for manual inspection, enabling spectroscopic and multi-wavelength follow-up near peak brightness.
I will also showcase a few noteworthy nuclear transients that were identified in archival data during the module’s development and conclude with a discussion of the challenges and plans for scaling the module to Rubin’s alert stream.
