WFST Follow-up of S251112cm: Searching for an Optical Counterpart to a Subsolar-mass Compact-binary Merger Candidate

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Abstract
Electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational-wave (GW) sources probe the properties, environments, and evolution of compact-object mergers. S251112cm belongs to an emerging class of GW candidates with possible subsolar-mass components. We present an optical counterpart search for S251112cm with the Wide Field Survey Telescope (WFST). The observations began 20.2 hr after the GW trigger and continued for 3 nights, covering approximately 780 deg 2 and 51% of the localization probability in the updated skymap. We searched for newly emerging, rapidly evolving, off-nuclear optical transients and identified four candidates whose host-galaxy distances are broadly consistent with the GW distance estimate. However, all four evolve substantially more slowly than AT 2017gfo, ruling out an AT 2017gfo-like origin and disfavoring their association with S251112cm as rapidly evolving kilonova counterparts. Combining WFST and DECam observations increases the covered localization probability to approximately 67%. Conditional on the counterpart lying within this footprint, we constrain a grid of binary-neutron-star kilonova models. For viewing angles θ obs < 60 ∘ , with the other parameters fixed to the best-fitting values for AT 2017gfo, models with dynamical ejecta mass M dyn ≳ 0.01 M ⊙ or wind ejecta mass M wind ≳ 0.05 M ⊙ are disfavored over most of the covered GW probability. Beyond kilonova models, our phenomenological analysis constrains rapidly evolving optical transients with T rise,1/2 ≤ 2 days to peak absolute magnitudes fainter than approximately −13 mag. To our knowledge, WFST provides the strongest optical constraints to date in the northern sky on possible rapidly evolving counterparts to this new class of GW candidates involving subsolar-mass compact objects. The comparable depths and complementary sky coverage of WFST and DECam extend these constraints across a larger fraction of the localization region at similar sensitivity.
Funding Information
  • National Natural Science Foundation of China (12325301)
  • Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Science (XDB0550300)
  • Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (GZC20261722)

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