The nature of the DLS fast transients

Abstract

The discovery and study of highly transient sources, especially those which rise to high brightness and then fade to obscurity, has been a major part of modern astrophysics. Well known examples include supernovae and novae. A byproduct of the Deep Lens Survey was the discovery of three transients which varied on a timescale of less than an hour. All three had faint and red counterparts, the brightest of which was identified with an M star. However, the remaining two showed hints of an extragalactic origin, one had a spatially extended counterpart and the other appeared in projection on the outskirts of a bright elliptical galaxy. If these two sources were really of an extragalactic origin then the two events represent a new class of exotic explosive transients. We undertook spectroscopic observations with the Keck telescope and find the two counterparts are also late type Galactic dwarfs. Our main conclusion is that flares from M dwarfs constitute a dense foreground fog and dominate over any plausible class of extragalactic fast transients by at least two orders of magnitude. Overcoming this fog will likely require dedicated surveys with careful optimization of target field location, filter(s) and cadence, pre-search imaging to filter out late type dwarfs and a well planned rapid followup plan.