ZTF photometric measurements of AT 2018lqh

The transient g-band light curve's duration above a half-maximum light is about 2.1 days, where 0.4/1.7 days are spent on the rise/decay, respectively. The estimated bolometric light curve of this object peaked at about 7x10^42^erg/s --roughly 7 times brighter than the neutron star (NS)-- NS merger event AT 2017gfo.

We show that this event can be explained by an explosion with a fast (v~0.08c) low-mass (~0.07M_{sun}_) ejecta, composed mostly of radioactive elements. For example, ejecta dominated by ^56^Ni with a timescale of t_0_~1.6d for the ejecta to become optically thin for {gamma}-rays fits the data well. Such a scenario requires burning at densities that are typically found in the envelopes of neutron stars or the cores of white dwarfs.