Change in the Orbital Period of a Binary System Due to an Outburst in a Windy Accretion Disk

Abstract: We consider a new mechanism for the removal of angular momentum from an X-ray binary system and the change in its orbital period—the mass loss in the form of a wind from an accretion disk. A powerful wind from a disk is observed in X-ray transients and is predicted by models. We have obtained an analytical estimate for the increase in the orbital period of a binary system with a wind from the disk during an outburst; quantitative estimates are given for the systems XTE J1118+480, A0620-00, and GRS 1124-68. The rates of increase in the period are comparable in absolute value to the observed rates of secular decrease in the period. We also compare the predicted rates of change in the period of a binary system due to the mass transfer into the disk and the outflow from the second Lagrange point with the observed ones. We conclude that the above-mentioned mechanisms cannot explain the observed secular decrease in the period, and it is necessary to consider a circumbinary disk that removes the binary’s angular momentum

Machine learning techniques for analysis of photometric data from the Open Supernova catalog

International audienceThe next generation of astronomical surveys will revolutionize our understandingof the Universe, raising unprecedented data challenges in the process. One ofthem is the impossibility to rely on human scanning for the identification ofunusual/unpredicted astrophysical objects. Moreover, given that most of theavailable data will be in the form of photometric observations, suchcharacterization cannot rely on the existence of high resolution spectroscopicobservations. The goal of this project is to detect the anomalies in the OpenSupernova Catalog (http://sne.space/) with use of machine learning. We willdevelop a pipeline where human expertise and modern machine learning techniquescan complement each other. Using supernovae as a case study, our proposal isdivided in two parts: the first developing a strategy and pipeline whereanomalous objects are identified, and a second phase where such anomalousobjects submitted to careful individual analysis. The strategy requires aninitial data set for which spectroscopic is available for training purposes, butcan be applied to a much larger data set for which we only have photometricobservations. This project represents an effective strategy to guarantee weshall not overlook exciting new science hidden in the data we fought so hard toacquire

Real-bogus scores for active anomaly detection

International audienceIn the task of anomaly detection in modern time-domain photometric surveys, the primary goal is to identify astrophysically interesting, rare, and unusual objects among a large volume of data. Unfortunately, artifacts -- such as plane or satellite tracks, bad columns on CCDs, and ghosts -- often constitute significant contaminants in results from anomaly detection analysis. In such contexts, the Active Anomaly Discovery (AAD) algorithm allows tailoring the output of anomaly detection pipelines according to what the expert judges to be scientifically interesting. We demonstrate how the introduction real-bogus scores, obtained from a machine learning classifier, improves the results from AAD. Using labeled data from the SNAD ZTF knowledge database, we train four real-bogus classifiers: XGBoost, CatBoost, Random Forest, and Extremely Randomized Trees. All the models perform real-bogus classification with similar effectiveness, achieving ROC-AUC scores ranging from 0.93 to 0.95. Consequently, we select the Random Forest model as the main model due to its simplicity and interpretability. The Random Forest classifier is applied to 67 million light curves from ZTF DR17. The output real-bogus score is used as an additional feature for two anomaly detection algorithms: static Isolation Forest and AAD. While results from Isolation Forest remained unchanged, the number of artifacts detected by the active approach decreases significantly with the inclusion of the real-bogus score, from 27 to 3 out of 100. We conclude that incorporating the real-bogus classifier result as an additional feature in the active anomaly detection pipeline significantly reduces the number of artifacts in the outputs, thereby increasing the incidence of astrophysically interesting objects presented to human experts

SNAD transient miner: Finding missed transient events in ZTF DR4 using k-D trees

International audienceWe report the automatic detection of 11 transients (7 possible supernovae and 4 active galactic nuclei candidates) within the Zwicky Transient Facility fourth data release (ZTF DR4), all of them observed in 2018 and absent from public catalogs. Among these, three were not part of the ZTF alert stream. Our transient mining strategy employs 41 physically motivated features extracted from both real light curves and four simulated light curve models (SN Ia, SN II, TDE, SLSN-I). These features are input to a k-D tree algorithm, from which we calculate the 15 nearest neighbors. After pre-processing and selection cuts, our dataset contained approximately a million objects among which we visually inspected the 105 closest neighbors from seven of our brightest, most well-sampled simulations, comprising 89 unique ZTF DR4 sources. Our result illustrates the potential of coherently incorporating domain knowledge and automatic learning algorithms, which is one of the guiding principles directing the SNAD team. It also demonstrates that the ZTF DR is a suitable testing ground for data mining algorithms aiming to prepare for the next generation of astronomical data

Real-bogus scores for active anomaly detection

International audienceIn the task of anomaly detection in modern time-domain photometric surveys, the primary goal is to identify astrophysically interesting, rare, and unusual objects among a large volume of data. Unfortunately, artifacts -- such as plane or satellite tracks, bad columns on CCDs, and ghosts -- often constitute significant contaminants in results from anomaly detection analysis. In such contexts, the Active Anomaly Discovery (AAD) algorithm allows tailoring the output of anomaly detection pipelines according to what the expert judges to be scientifically interesting. We demonstrate how the introduction real-bogus scores, obtained from a machine learning classifier, improves the results from AAD. Using labeled data from the SNAD ZTF knowledge database, we train four real-bogus classifiers: XGBoost, CatBoost, Random Forest, and Extremely Randomized Trees. All the models perform real-bogus classification with similar effectiveness, achieving ROC-AUC scores ranging from 0.93 to 0.95. Consequently, we select the Random Forest model as the main model due to its simplicity and interpretability. The Random Forest classifier is applied to 67 million light curves from ZTF DR17. The output real-bogus score is used as an additional feature for two anomaly detection algorithms: static Isolation Forest and AAD. While results from Isolation Forest remained unchanged, the number of artifacts detected by the active approach decreases significantly with the inclusion of the real-bogus score, from 27 to 3 out of 100. We conclude that incorporating the real-bogus classifier result as an additional feature in the active anomaly detection pipeline significantly reduces the number of artifacts in the outputs, thereby increasing the incidence of astrophysically interesting objects presented to human experts

Rainbow: a colorful approach on multi-passband light curve estimation

International audienceWe present Rainbow, a physically motivated framework which enables simultaneous multi-band light curve fitting. It allows the user to construct a 2-dimensional continuous surface across wavelength and time, even in situations where the number of observations in each filter is significantly limited. Assuming the electromagnetic radiation emission from the transient can be approximated by a black-body, we combined an expected temperature evolution and a parametric function describing its bolometric light curve. These three ingredients allow the information available in one passband to guide the reconstruction in the others, thus enabling a proper use of multi-survey data. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method by applying it to simulated data from the Photometric LSST Astronomical Time-series Classification Challenge (PLAsTiCC) as well as real data from the Young Supernova Experiment (YSE DR1).We evaluate the quality of the estimated light curves according to three different tests: goodness of fit, time of peak prediction and ability to transfer information to machine learning (ML) based classifiers. Results confirm that Rainbow leads to equivalent (SNII) or up to 75% better (SN Ibc) goodness of fit when compared to the Monochromatic approach. Similarly, accuracy when using Rainbow best-fit values as a parameter space in multi-class ML classification improves for all classes in our sample. An efficient implementation of Rainbow has been publicly released as part of the light curve package at https://github.com/light-curve/light-curve. Our approach enables straight forward light curve estimation for objects with observations in multiple filters and from multiple experiments. It is particularly well suited for situations where light curve sampling is sparse

Rainbow: a colorful approach on multi-passband light curve estimation

International audienceWe present Rainbow, a physically motivated framework which enables simultaneous multi-band light curve fitting. It allows the user to construct a 2-dimensional continuous surface across wavelength and time, even in situations where the number of observations in each filter is significantly limited. Assuming the electromagnetic radiation emission from the transient can be approximated by a black-body, we combined an expected temperature evolution and a parametric function describing its bolometric light curve. These three ingredients allow the information available in one passband to guide the reconstruction in the others, thus enabling a proper use of multi-survey data. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method by applying it to simulated data from the Photometric LSST Astronomical Time-series Classification Challenge (PLAsTiCC) as well as real data from the Young Supernova Experiment (YSE DR1).We evaluate the quality of the estimated light curves according to three different tests: goodness of fit, time of peak prediction and ability to transfer information to machine learning (ML) based classifiers. Results confirm that Rainbow leads to equivalent (SNII) or up to 75% better (SN Ibc) goodness of fit when compared to the Monochromatic approach. Similarly, accuracy when using Rainbow best-fit values as a parameter space in multi-class ML classification improves for all classes in our sample. An efficient implementation of Rainbow has been publicly released as part of the light curve package at https://github.com/light-curve/light-curve. Our approach enables straight forward light curve estimation for objects with observations in multiple filters and from multiple experiments. It is particularly well suited for situations where light curve sampling is sparse

Anomaly detection in the Zwicky Transient Facility DR3

International audienceWe present results from applying the SNAD anomaly detection pipeline to the third public data release of the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF DR3). The pipeline is composed of three stages: feature extraction, search of outliers with machine learning algorithms, and anomaly identification with followup by human experts. Our analysis concentrates in three ZTF fields, comprising more than 2.25 million objects. A set of four automatic learning algorithms was used to identify 277 outliers, which were subsequently scrutinized by an expert. From these, 188 (68 per cent) were found to be bogus light curves – including effects from the image subtraction pipeline as well as overlapping between a star and a known asteroid, 66 (24 per cent) were previously reported sources whereas 23 (8 per cent) correspond to non-catalogued objects, with the two latter cases of potential scientific interest (e.g. one spectroscopically confirmed RS Canum Venaticorum star, four supernovae candidates, one red dwarf flare). Moreover, using results from the expert analysis, we were able to identify a simple bi-dimensional relation that can be used to aid filtering potentially bogus light curves in future studies. We provide a complete list of objects with potential scientific application so they can be further scrutinised by the community. These results confirm the importance of combining automatic machine learning algorithms with domain knowledge in the construction of recommendation systems for astronomy. Our code is publicly available.^