Hot Subdwarf All Southern Sky Fast Transit Survey with the Evryscope

Abstract

Abstract We have conducted a survey of candidate hot subdwarf (HSD) stars in the southern sky searching for fast transits, eclipses, and sinusoidal-like variability in the Evryscope light curves. The survey aims to detect transit signals from Neptune-size planets to gas giants, and eclipses from M-dwarfs and brown dwarfs. The other variability signals are primarily expected to be from compact binaries and reflection effect binaries. Due to the small size of HSDs (R ≈ 0.2 R ⊙), transit and eclipse signals are expected to last only ≈20 minutes, but with large signal depths (up to completely eclipsing if the orientation is edge on). With its 2 minute cadence and continuous observation, the Evryscope is well placed to recover these fast transits and eclipses. The very large field of view (8150 deg2) is critical to obtain enough HSD targets, despite their rarity. We identified ≈11,000 potential HSDs from the 9.3 M Evryscope light curves for sources brighter than m g = 15. With our machine-learning spectral classifier, we flagged high confidence targets and estimate the total HSDs in the survey to be ≈1400. The light-curve search detected three planet transit candidates, shown to have stellar companions from follow-up analysis. We discovered several new compact binaries (including two with unseen degenerate companions), two eclipsing binaries with M-dwarf companions, as well as new reflection effect binaries and others with sinusoidal-like variability. Four of the discoveries are being published in separate follow-up papers, and we discuss the follow-up potential of the other discoveries.