Papers › Designing an Optimal Kilonova Search using DECam for Gravitational Wave Events
Designing an Optimal Kilonova Search using DECam for Gravitational Wave Events
C. R. Bom, J. Annis, A. Garcia, A. Palmese, N. Sherman, M. Soares-Santos, L. Santana-Silva, R. Morgan, K. Bechtol, T. Davis, H. T. Diehl, S. S. Allam, T. G. Bachmann, B. M. O. Fraga, J. Garcıa-Bellido, M. S. S. Gill, K. Herner, C. D. Kilpatrick, M. Makler, F. Olivares E., M. E. S. Pereira, J. Pineda, A. Santos, D. L. Tucker, M. P. Wiesner, M. Aguena, O. Alves, D. Bacon, P. H. Bernardinelli, E. Bertin, S. Bocquet, D. Brooks, M. Carrasco Kind, J. Carretero, C. Conselice, M. Costanzi, L. N. da Costa, J. De Vicente, S. Desai, P. Doel, S. Everett, I. Ferrero, J. Frieman, M. Gatti, D. W. Gerdes, D. Gruen, R. A. Gruendl, G. Gutierrez, S. R. Hinton, D. L. Hollowood, K. Honscheid, D. J. James, K. Kuehn, N. Kuropatkin, P. Melchior, J. Mena-Fernandez, F. Menanteau, A. Pieres, A. A. Plazas Malagon, M. Raveri, M. Rodriguez-Monroy, E. Sanchez, B. Santiago, I. Sevilla-Noarbe, M. Smith, E. Suchyta, M. E. C. Swanson, G. Tarle, C. To, N. Weaverdyck
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We address the problem of optimally identifying all kilonovae detected via gravitational wave emission in the upcoming LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA Collaboration observing run, O4, which is expected to be sensitive to a factor of ∼7 more Binary Neutron Stars alerts than previously. Electromagnetic follow-up of all but the brightest of these new events will require >1 meter telescopes, for which limited time is available. We present an optimized observing strategy for the Dark Energy Camera during O4. We base our study on simulations of gravitational wave events expected for O4 and wide-prior kilonova simulations. We derive the detectabilities of events for realistic observing conditions. We optimize our strategy for confirming a kilonova while minimizing telescope time. For a wide range of kilonova parameters, corresponding to a fainter kilonova compared to GW170817/AT2017gfo we find that, with this optimal strategy, the discovery probability for electromagnetic counterparts with the Dark Energy Camera is ∼80% at the nominal binary neutron star gravitational wave detection limit for the next LVK observing run (190 Mpc), which corresponds to a ∼30% improvement compared to the strategy adopted during the previous observing run. For more distant events (∼330 Mpc), we reach a ∼60% probability of detection, a factor of ∼2 increase. For a brighter kilonova model dominated by the blue component that reproduces the observations of GW170817/AT2017gfo, we find that we can reach ∼90% probability of detection out to 330 Mpc, representing an increase of ∼20 %, while also reducing the total telescope time required to follow-up events by ∼20%.
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