Hot Subdwarf All Southern Sky Fast Transit Survey with the Evryscope

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 deg 2 ) 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.