Published December 10, 2018 | Version Submitted
White Paper Open

Target of Opportunity Observations of Gravitational Wave Events with LSST

Abstract

The discovery of the electromagnetic counterparts to the binary neutron star merger GW170817 has opened the era of GW+EM multi-messenger astronomy. Exploiting this breakthrough requires increasing samples to explore the diversity of kilonova behaviour and provide more stringent constraints on the Hubble constant, and tests of fundamental physics. LSST can play a key role in this field in the 2020s, when the gravitational wave detector network is expected to detect higher rates of merger events involving neutron stars (∼10s per year) out to distances of several hundred Mpc. Here we propose comprehensive target-of-opportunity (ToOs) strategies for follow-up of gravitational-wave sources that will make LSST the premiere machine for discovery and early characterization for neutron star mergers and other gravitational-wave sources.

Additional Information

This work developed partly within the TVS Science Collaboration and the author acknowledge the great support of TVS in the preparation of this paper. The authors acknowledge support from the Flatiron Institute and Heising-Simons Foundation for the development of this paper.

Attached Files

Submitted - 1812.04051.pdf

Files

1812.04051.pdf

Files (793.3 kB)

Name Size Download all
md5:f6c5dc9bc0ce69bac77d83783b74ba23
793.3 kB Preview Download

Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
98498
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20190906-153151077

Related works

Funding

Flatiron Institute
Heising-Simons Foundation

Dates

Created
2019-09-06
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2023-06-02
Created from EPrint's last_modified field