The Zwicky Transient Facility: Science Objectives
Creators: name: Graham, Matthew J.
name: Kulkarni, S. R.
name: Bellm, Eric C.
name: Adams, Scott M.
name: Barbarino, Cristina
name: Blagorodnova, Nadejda
name: Bodewits, Dennis
name: Bolin, Bryce
name: Brady, Patrick R.
name: Cenko, S. Bradley
name: Chang, Chan-Kao
name: Coughlin, Michael W.
name: De, Kishalay
name: Eadie, Gwendolyn
name: Farnham, Tony L.
name: Feindt, Ulrich
name: Franckowiak, Anna
name: Fremling, Christoffer
name: Gal-yam, Avishay
name: Gezari, Suvi
name: Ghosh, Shaon
name: Goldstein, Daniel A.
name: Golkhou, V. Zach
name: Goobar, Ariel
name: Ho, Anna Y. Q.
name: Huppenkothen, Daniela
name: Ivezic, Zeljko
name: Jones, R. Lynne
name: Juric, Mario
name: Kaplan, David L.
name: Kasliwal, Mansi M.
name: Kelley, Michael S. P.
name: Kupfer, Thomas
name: Lee, Chien-De
name: Lin, Hsing Wen
name: Lunnan, Ragnhild
name: Mahabal, Ashish A.
name: Miller, Adam A.
name: Ngeow, Chow-Choong
name: Nugent, Peter
name: Ofek, Eran O.
name: Prince, Thomas A.
name: Rauch, Ludwig
name: van Roestel, Jan
name: Schulze, Steve
name: Singer, Leo P.
name: Sollerman, Jesper
name: Taddia, Francesco
name: Yan, Lin
name: Ye, Quan-Zhi
name: Yu, Po-Chieh
name: Andreoni, Igor
name: Barlow, Tom
name: Bauer, James
name: Beck, Ron
name: Belicki, Justin
name: Biswas, Rahul
name: Brinnel, Valery
name: Brooke, Tim
name: Bue, Brian
name: Bulla, Mattia
name: Burdge, Kevin
name: Burruss, Rick
name: Connolly, Andrew
name: Cromer, John
name: Cunningham, Virginia
name: Dekany, Richard
name: Delacroix, Alex
name: Desai, Vandana
name: Duev, Dmitry A.
name: Hacopians, Eugean
name: Hale, David
name: Helou, George
name: Henning, John
name: Hover, David
name: Hillenbrand, Lynne A.
name: Howell, Justin
name: Hung, Tiara
name: Imel, David
name: Ip, Wing-Huen
name: Jackson, Edward
name: Kaspi, Shai
name: Kaye, Stephen
name: Kowalski, Marek
name: Kramer, Emily
name: Kuhn, Michael
name: Landry, Walter
name: Laher, Russ R.
name: Mao, Peter
name: Masci, Frank J.
name: Monkewitz, Serge
name: Murphy, Patrick
name: Nordin, Jakob
name: Patterson, Maria T.
name: Penprase, Bryan
name: Porter, Michael
name: Rebbapragada, Umaa
name: Reiley, Dan
name: Riddle, Reed
name: Rigault, Mickael
name: Rodriguez, Hector
name: Rusholme, Ben
name: van Santen, Jakob
name: Shupe, David L.
name: Smith, Roger M.
name: Soumagnac, Maayane T.
name: Stein, Robert
name: Surace, Jason
name: Szkody, Paula
name: Terek, Scott
name: van Sistine, Angela
name: van Velzen, Sjoert
name: Vestrand, W. Thomas
name: Walters, Richard
name: Ward, Charlotte
name: Zhang, Chaoran
name: Zolkower, Jeffry
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2019
Subjects: subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a public-private enterprise, is a new time domain survey employing a dedicated camera on the Palomar 48-inch Schmidt telescope with a 47 deg$^2$ field of view and 8 second readout time. It is well positioned in the development of time domain astronomy, offering operations at 10% of the scale and style of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) with a single 1-m class survey telescope. The public surveys will cover the observable northern sky every three nights in g and r filters and the visible Galactic plane every night in g and r. Alerts generated by these surveys are sent in real time to brokers. A consortium of universities which provided funding ("partnership") are undertaking several boutique surveys. The combination of these surveys producing one million alerts per night allows for exploration of transient and variable astrophysical phenomena brighter than r $\sim$ 20.5 on timescales of minutes to years. We describe the primary science objectives driving ZTF including the physics of supernovae and relativistic explosions, multi-messenger astrophysics, supernova cosmology, active galactic nuclei and tidal disruption events, stellar variability, and Solar System objects.
description: 26 pages, 7 figures, Published in PASP Focus Issue on the Zwicky Transient Facility