UV-Opt LC of tidal disruption flare AT2018zr

The ZTF light curve of the tidal disruption event (TDE) samples the rise-to-peak exceptionally well, with 50 days of g- and r-band detections before the time of maximum light. We also present our multi-wavelength follow-up observations, including the detection of a thermal (kT~100eV) X-ray source that is two orders of magnitude fainter than the contemporaneous optical/UV blackbody luminosity, and a stringent upper limit to the radio emission.

We use observations of 128 known active galactic nuclei (AGNs) to assess the quality of the ZTF astrometry, finding a median host-flare distance of 0.2" for genuine nuclear flares. Using ZTF observations of variability from known AGNs and supernovae we show how these sources can be separated from TDEs. A combination of light-curve shape, color, and location in the host galaxy can be used to select a clean TDE sample from multi-band optical surveys such as ZTF or the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.