1. Designing an Optimal Kilonova Search using DECam for Gravitational Wave Events
- Author
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Clecio Bom, James Annis, Alyssa Garcia, Antonella Palmese, Nora Sherman, Marcelle Soares-Santos, Luidhy Santana-Silva, Robert Morgan, Bechtol, K., Davis, T., Diehl, H. T., Sahar Allam, Tristan Bachmann, Fraga, B. M. O., Juan Garcia-Bellido, Mandeep Gill, Kenneth Herner, Kilpatrick, C. D., Martin Makler, Felipe Olivares E., Maria Elidaiana da Silva Pereira, Pineda, J., Santos, A., Douglas Tucker, Matthew Wiesner, Aguena, M., Alves, O., Bacon, D., Bernardinelli, P. H., Bertin, E., Sebastian Bocquet, David Brooks, Matias Carrasco Kind, Carretero, J., Christopher Conselice, Costanzi, M., Da Costa, L. N., Juan De Vicente-Albendea, Shantanu Desai, Doel, P., Everett, S., Ferrero, I., Joshua Frieman, Gatti, M., David Gerdes, Daniel Gruen, Gruendl, R. A., Gaston Gutierrez, Hinton, S. R., Hollowood, D. L., Klaus Honscheid, David James, Kyler Kuehn, Nikolay Kuropatkin, Peter Melchior, Juan Mena-Fernández, Felipe Menanteau, ADRIANO PIERES, Plazas Malagón, Andrés A., Raveri, M., Rodriguez-Monroy, M., Sanchez, E., Santiago, B., Ignacio Sevilla-Noarbe, Mathew Smith, Eric Suchyta, Swanson, M. E. C., Gregory Tarlé, Chun-Hao To, and Weaverdyck, N.
- Subjects
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) ,FOS: Physical sciences ,General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) ,Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena ,Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics ,Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) ,General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology - Abstract
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 $\sim 7$ 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 $\sim 80\%$ at the nominal binary neutron star gravitational wave detection limit for the next LVK observing run (190 Mpc), which corresponds to a $\sim 30\%$ improvement compared to the strategy adopted during the previous observing run. For more distant events ($\sim 330$ Mpc), we reach a $\sim 60\%$ probability of detection, a factor of $\sim 2$ increase. For a brighter kilonova model dominated by the blue component that reproduces the observations of GW170817/AT2017gfo, we find that we can reach $\sim 90\%$ probability of detection out to 330 Mpc, representing an increase of $\sim 20 \%$, while also reducing the total telescope time required to follow-up events by $\sim 20\%$., 23 pages, 10 figures, to be submitted to AAS Journals