Gap Transients Interacting with Circumstellar Medium

Abstract

In the last 20 years, modern wide-field surveys discovered a new class of peculiar transients, which lie in the luminosity gap between standard supernovae and classical novae. These transients are often called “intermediate luminosity optical transients” or “gap transients”. They are usually distinguished in subgroups based on their phenomenology, such as supernova impostors, intermediate luminosity red transients, and luminous red novae. In this review, we present a brief overview of their observational features and possible physical scenarios to date, in the attempt to understand their nature.