Speaker
Description
We live in a golden era for time-domain astronomy. The fourth observing run of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA gravitational wave detectors is in full swing and observatories around the world search for rapidly-fading kilonovae associated with binary neutron star mergers. In addition to follow-up campaigns, wide-field surveys such as the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) scan most of the observable sky with a high cadence, opening a discovery space historically difficult to explore in the optical. I will present results from real-time searches for elusive fast optical transients in ZTF survey data, in close collaboration with colleagues at OKC. These results include new constraints on kilonova rates, the discovery of a population of cosmological afterglows found independently of gamma-ray triggers, and the first optical identification of a relativistic tidal disruption event.
