Tidal disruption events (TDEs) offer a unique way to study dormant black holes. While the number of observed TDEs has grown thanks to the emergence of wide-field surveys in the past few decades, questions regarding the nature of the observed optical, UV, and X-ray emission remain. We present a uniformly selected sample of 30 spectroscopically classified TDEs from the Zwicky Transient Facility Phase I survey operations with follow-up Swift UV and X-ray observations. Through our investigation into correlations between light-curve properties, we recover a shallow positive correlation between the peak bolometric luminosity and decay timescales. We introduce a new spectroscopic class of TDE, TDE-featureless, which are characterized by featureless optical spectra. The new TDE-featureless class shows larger peak bolometric luminosities, peak blackbody temperatures, and peak blackbody radii. We examine the differences between the X-ray bright and X-ray faint populations of TDEs in this sample, finding that X-ray bright TDEs show higher peak blackbody luminosities than the X-ray faint subsample. This sample of optically selected TDEs is the largest sample of TDEs from a single survey yet, and the systematic discovery, classification, and follow-up of this sample allows for robust characterization of TDE properties, an important stepping stone looking forward toward the Rubin era.

The Ultraviolet Explorer (UVEX ) will undertake a synoptic survey of the entire sky in near-UV (NUV) and far-UV (FUV) bands, probing the dynamic FUV and NUV universe, as well as perform a modern, all-sky imaging survey that reaches ≥ 50 times deeper than GALEX . Combined with a powerful broadband spectroscopic capability and timely response to target of opportunity discoveries, UVEX will address fundamental questions from the NASA Astrophysics Roadmap and the Astro2020 Decadal Survey, enabling unique and important studies across the breadth of astrophysics. Imaging and spectroscopic surveys with UVEX will probe key aspects of the evolution of galaxies by understanding how star formation and stellar evolution at low metallicities affect the growth and evolution of lowmetallicity, low-mass galaxies in the local universe. Such galaxies contain half the mass in the local universe, and are analogs for the first galaxies, but observed at distances that make them accessible to detailed study. The UVEX time-domain surveys and prompt spectroscopic follow-up capability will probe the environments, energetics, and emission processes in the early aftermaths of gravitational wave-discovered compact object mergers, discover hot, fast UV transients, and diagnose the early stages of explosive phenomena. UVEX will become a key community resource by filling a gap in the new generation of wide-field, sensitive optical and infrared surveys provided by the Rubin, Euclid , and Roman observatories. We discuss the scientific potential of UVEX , including unique studies UVEX will enable for studying exoplanet atmospheres, hot stars, explosive phenomena, black holes, and galaxy evolution.

High-energy neutrinos have thus far been observed in coincidence with timevariable emission from three different accreting black holes: a gamma-ray flare from a blazar (TXS 0506+056), an optical transient following a stellar tidal disruption (AT2019dsg), and an optical outburst from an active galactic nucleus (AT2019fdr). Here we present a unified explanation for the latter two of these sources: accretion flares that reach the Eddington limit. A signature of these events is a luminous infrared reverberation signal from circumnuclear dust that is heated by the flare. Using this property we construct a sample of similar sources, revealing a third event coincident with a PeV-scale neutrino. This sample of three accretion flares is correlated with high-energy neutrinos at a significance of 3.7σ. Super-Eddington accretion could explain the high particle acceleration efficiency of this new population.Accreting black holes have long been suggested as potential sources of high-energy particles (1, 2) and this expectation was supported by the detection of a high-energy neutrino coincident (at the 3σ-level) with gamma-ray flaring from the blazar TXS 0506+056 (3). However, blazars alone cannot account for the observed high-energy neutrino flux (4, 5); similar to the electromagnetic sky, we can expect that the observed cosmic neutrino flux (6) arises from multiple source populations (7).In the last two years, optical follow-up observations of neutrino alerts (8) using the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF, ( 9)) have identified two optical flares from the centers of galaxies coincident with PeV-scale neutrinos: AT2019dsg (10) and AT2019fdr (11). The former belongs to the class of spectroscopically-classified tidal disruption events (TDEs) from quiescent black holes, while the latter originated from a type 1 (i.e., unobscured) active galactic nucleus (AGN).However, the distinctive shared properties we present below suggest these flares share a common origin.

We present photometric and spectroscopic observations of the Type IIn supernova SN 2019zrk (also known as ZTF 20aacbyec). The SN shows a > 100 day precursor, with a slow rise, followed by a rapid rise to M ≈ −19.2 in the r and g bands. The post-peak light-curve decline is well fit with an exponential decay with a timescale of ∼ 39 days, but it shows prominent undulations, with an amplitude of ∼ 1 mag. Both the light curve and spectra are dominated by an interaction with a dense circumstellar medium (CSM), probably from previous mass ejections. The spectra evolve from a scattering-dominated Type IIn spectrum to a spectrum with strong P-Cygni absorptions. The expansion velocity is high, ∼ 16, 000 km s −1 , even in the last spectra. The last spectrum ∼ 110 days after the main eruption reveals no evidence for advanced nucleosynthesis. From analysis of the spectra and light curves, we estimate the mass-loss rate to be ∼ 4 × 10 −2 M yr −1 for a CSM velocity of 100 km s −1 , and a CSM mass of 1 M . We find strong similarities for both the precursor, general light curve, and spectral evolution with SN 2009ip and similar SNe, although SN 2019zrk displays a brighter peak magnitude. Different scenarios for the nature of the 09ip-class of SNe, based on pulsational pair instability eruptions, wave heating, and mergers, are discussed.

AM CVn systems are ultra-compact, hydrogen-depleted and helium-rich, accreting binaries with degenerate or semi-degenerate donors. We report the discovery of five new eclipsing AM CVn systems with orbital periods of 61.5, 55.5, 53.3, 37.4, and 35.4 minutes. These systems were discovered by searching for deep eclipses in the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) lightcurves of white dwarfs selected using Gaia parallaxes. We obtained phase-resolved spectroscopy to confirm that all systems are AM CVn binaries, and we obtained high-speed photometry to confirm the eclipse and characterize the systems. The spectra show double-peaked He-lines but also show metals, including K and Zn, elements that have never been detected in AM CVn systems before. By modelling the high-speed photometry, we measured the mass and radius of the donor star, potentially constraining the evolutionary channel that formed these AM CVn systems. We determined that the average mass of the accreting white dwarf is ≈0.8 M⊙, and that the white dwarfs in long-period systems are hotter than predicted by recently updated theoretical models. The donors have a high entropy and are a factor of ≈ 2 more massive compared to zero-entropy donors at the same orbital period. The large donor radius is most consistent with He-star progenitors, although the observed spectral features seem to contradict this. The discovery of 5 new eclipsing AM CVn systems is consistent with the known observed AM CVn space density and estimated ZTF recovery efficiency.