Revealing Cataclysmic Variable Superoutbursts: A TESS-Based Catalog

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) provides unique data due to its ability to continuously monitor brightness variations in astronomical events over extended periods. Any transient reported to the Transient Name Server (https://www.wis-tns.org) that also lands within the TESS field-of-view automatically has a continuous light curve. In this work, we compile a catalog of cataclysmic variable superoutbursts, which were previously unknown but identified by TESS light curves. Using the Lomb-Scargle method, we calculated the periodicities of these systems. We have detected up to four harmonics in these events. The superoutbursts beat periods range from 1.83 hours to upwards of 10 hours, with at least two sub-2-hour periodicities detected. These short-period systems are valuable because they are likely to be sources of gravitational wave emission. This catalog highlights TESS’s ability to capture unique variability exhibited by CV superoutburst systems.