ZTF optical observations of FRB 20200120E in M81

ATel #14666; Igor Andreoni (Caltech), Jan van Roestel (Caltech), Matthew Graham (Caltech), Jesper Sollerman (OKC)
on 27 May 2021; 23:05 UT
Credential Certification: Igor Andreoni (igor.andreoni@gmail.com)

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The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF; Bellm et al., 2019; Graham et al., 2019) observed the field where the nearby, repeating fast radio burst FRB 20200120E is located (Kirsten et al., 2021) 1190 times in 433 distinct nights, from 2018 March 27 until 2021 May 25. A total of 534 exposures of 30s were acquired in g-band, 656 in r-band.

We explored ZTF data at the location of FRB 20200120E using the ZTF point-spread-function (PSF) forced photometry service (Masci et al., 2018) on images processed through the ZTF reduction and image subtraction pipelines at IPAC (Masci et al., 2019). No high-significance (> 5 sigma) source was detected in individual images and no significant detection was found by binning nightly data in each band. A tentative ~3 sigma detection was found in one image acquired on 2020 November 02 10:41:16 UTC, with apparent magnitude r = 21.10 +- 0.32 mag. Weather conditions at the time of the observation were photometric. However, such a low-significance detection is consistent with expected fluctuations of the background in >1k images, thus it cannot be considered solid from a statistical standpoint.

Fourteen ZTF observations of the field of FRB 20200120E occurred on the same nights in which repetitions of the FRB were found by CHIME (Bhardwaj et al., 2021), whose location is suitable for simultaneous observations. Upper limits (5 sigma) for those epochs are reported below. The first column indicates the start time of the ZTF exposure, the second column the upper limit apparent magnitude, the last column the upper limit absolute magnitude assuming a distance to M81 of 3.77 Mpc (GLADE catalog; Dalya et al., 2018). The FRB times and identifiers are reported from the CHIME/FRB Public Database.

FRB 210430: 2021-04-30 03:19:02.400583
2021-04-30 04:22:53 | g > 20.7 mag | g > -7.2 mag
2021-04-30 04:24:18 | g > 20.7 mag | g > -7.2 mag
2021-04-30 07:48:56 | r > 20.0 mag | r > -7.9 mag
2021-04-30 07:50:17 | r > 19.6 mag | r > -8.3 mag

FRB 210421: 2021-04-21 04:03:48.373555
2021-04-21 04:13:49 | r > 20.2 mag | r > -7.7 mag
2021-04-21 05:00:40 | g > 20.0 mag | g > -7.9 mag

FRB 201129: 2020-11-29 13:31:29.857566
2020-11-29 09:47:40 | r > 19.6 mag | r > -8.3 mag
2020-11-29 09:48:20 | r > 19.5 mag | r > -8.4 mag
2020-11-29 11:45:53 | r > 19.5 mag | r > -8.4 mag
2020-11-29 13:17:20 | g > 19.8 mag | g > -8.1 mag

FRB 200206: 2020-02-06 08:50:45.752212
2020-02-06 04:40:34 | r > 19.0 mag | r > -8.9 mag
2020-02-06 04:46:05 | r > 19.0 mag | r > -8.9 mag
2020-02-06 07:21:12 | g > 19.3 mag | g > -8.6 mag
2020-02-06 07:22:35 | g > 19.3 mag | g > -8.6 mag


Based on observations obtained with the Samuel Oschin Telescope 48-inch and the 60-inch Telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Zwicky Transient Facility project. ZTF is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. AST-2034437 and a collaboration including Caltech, IPAC, the Weizmann Institute for Science, the Oskar Klein Center at Stockholm University, the University of Maryland, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron and Humboldt University, the TANGO Consortium of Taiwan, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Trinity College Dublin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, and IN2P3, France. Operations are conducted by COO, IPAC, and UW. The ZTF forced-photometry service was funded under the Heising-Simons Foundation grant #12540303 (PI: Graham). We acknowledge use of the CHIME/FRB Public Database, provided at https://www.chime-frb.ca/ by the CHIME/FRB Collaboration.