Optimizing searches for electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave triggers

Coughlin, M. W. et al. (2018) Optimizing searches for electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave triggers. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 478(1), pp. 692-702. (doi: 10.1093/mnras/sty1066)

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Abstract

With the detection of a binary neutron star system and its corresponding electromagnetic counterparts, a new window of transient astronomy has opened. Due to the size of the sky localization regions, which can span hundreds to thousands of square degrees, there are significant benefits to optimizing tilings for these large sky areas. The rich science promised by gravitational-wave astronomy has led to the proposal for a variety of proposed tiling and time allocation schemes, and for the first time, we make a systematic comparison of some of these methods. We find that differences of a factor of 2 or more in efficiency are possible, depending on the algorithm employed. For this reason, with future surveys searching for electromagnetic counterparts, care should be taken when selecting tiling, time allocation, and scheduling algorithms to optimize counterpart detection.

Item Type:Articles
Additional Information:MC is supported by the David and Ellen Lee Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. DT and NC are supported by the Na- tional Science Foundation, under NSF grant number PHY 1505373. YH is supported by the National Natu- ral Science Foundation of China, under NSFC 11703098. CWS is grateful to the DOE Office of Science for their support under award DESC 0007881.
Keywords:Space and planetary science, astronomy and astrophysics.
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Chan, Mr Man Leong
Authors: Coughlin, M. W., Tao, D., Chan, M. L., Chatterjee, D., Christensen, N., Ghosh, S., Greco, G., Hu, Y., Kapadia, S., Rana, J., Salafia, O. S., and Stubbs, C.
College/School:College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy
Journal Name:Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Publisher:Oxford University Press
ISSN:0035-8711
ISSN (Online):1365-2966
Published Online:26 April 2018
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2018 The Authors
First Published:First published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 478(1): 692-702
Publisher Policy:Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher

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