How Many Kilonovae Can Be Found in Past, Present, and Future Survey Datasets?
Abstract
The discovery of a kilonova (KN) associated with the Advanced LIGO (aLIGO)/Virgo event GW170817 opens up new avenues of multi-messenger astrophysics. Here, using realistic simulations, we provide estimates of the number of KNe that could be found in data from past, present and future surveys without a gravitational-wave trigger. For the simulation, we construct a spectral time-series model based on the DES-GW multi-band light-curve from the single known KN event, and we use an average of BNS rates from past studies of , consistent with the event found so far. Examining past and current datasets from transient surveys, the number of KNe we expect to find for ASAS-SN, SDSS, PS1, SNLS, DES, and SMT is between 0 and . We predict the number of detections per future survey to be: 8.3 from ATLAS, 10.6 from ZTF, 5.5/69 from LSST (the Deep Drilling / Wide Fast Deep), and 16.0 from WFIRST. The maximum redshift of KNe discovered for each survey is z = 0.8 for WFIRST, z = 0.25 for LSST and z = 0.04 for ZTF and ATLAS. For the LSST survey, we also provide contamination estimates from Type Ia and Core-collapse supernovae: after light-curve and template-matching requirements, we estimate a background of just 2 events. More broadly, we stress that future transient surveys should consider how to optimize their search strategies to improve their detection efficiency, and to consider similar analyses for GW follow-up programs.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1710.05845,
title = {How Many Kilonovae Can Be Found in Past, Present, and Future Survey Datasets?},
author = {D. Scolnic and R. Kessler and D. Brout and P. S. Cowperthwaite and M. Soares-Santos and J. Annis and K. Herner and H. -Y. Chen and M. Sako and Z. Doctor and R. E. Butler and A. Palmese and H. T. Diehl and J. Frieman and D. E. Holz and E. Berger and R. Chornock and V. A. Villar and M. Nicholl and R. Biswas and R. Hounsell and R. J. Foley and J. Metzger and A. Rest and J. García-Bellido and A. Möller and P. Nugent and T. M. C. Abbott and F. B. Abdalla and S. Allam and K. Bechtol and A. Benoit-Lévy and E. Bertin and D. Brooks and E. Buckley-Geer and A. Carnero Rosell and M. Carrasco Kind and J. Carretero and F. J. Castander and C. E. Cunha and C. B. D'Andrea and L. N. da Costa and C. Davis and P. Doel and A. Drlica-Wagner and T. F. Eifler and B. Flaugher and P. Fosalba and E. Gaztanaga and D. W. Gerdes and D. Gruen and R. A. Gruendl and J. Gschwend and G. Gutierrez and W. G. Hartley and K. Honscheid and D. J. James and M. W. G. Johnson and M. D. Johnson and E. Krause and K. Kuehn and S. Kuhlmann and O. Lahav and T. S. Li and M. Lima and M. A. G. Maia and M. March and J. L. Marshall and F. Menanteau and R. Miquel and E. Neilsen and A. A. Plazas and E. Sanchez and V. Scarpine and M. Schubnell and I. Sevilla-Noarbe and M. Smith and R. C. Smith and F. Sobreira and E. Suchyta and M. E. C. Swanson and G. Tarle and R. C. Thomas and D. L. Tucker and A. R. Walker and DES Collaboration},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.05845},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
Submitted to ApJL