How Many Kilonovae Can Be Found in Past, Present, and Future Survey Datasets?
Creators: name: Scolnic, D.
name: Kessler, R.
name: Brout, D.
name: Cowperthwaite, P. S.
name: Soares-Santos, M.
name: Annis, J.
name: Herner, K.
name: Chen, H. -Y.
name: Sako, M.
name: Doctor, Z.
name: Butler, R. E.
name: Palmese, A.
name: Diehl, H. T.
name: Frieman, J.
name: Holz, D. E.
name: Berger, E.
name: Chornock, R.
name: Villar, V. A.
name: Nicholl, M.
name: Biswas, R.
name: Hounsell, R.
name: Foley, R. J.
name: Metzger, J.
name: Rest, A.
name: García-Bellido, J.
name: Möller, A.
name: Nugent, P.
name: Abbott, T. M. C.
name: Abdalla, F. B.
name: Allam, S.
name: Bechtol, K.
name: Benoit-Lévy, A.
name: Bertin, E.
name: Brooks, D.
name: Buckley-Geer, E.
name: Rosell, A. Carnero
name: Kind, M. Carrasco
name: Carretero, J.
name: Castander, F. J.
name: Cunha, C. E.
name: D'Andrea, C. B.
name: da Costa, L. N.
name: Davis, C.
name: Doel, P.
name: Drlica-Wagner, A.
name: Eifler, T. F.
name: Flaugher, B.
name: Fosalba, P.
name: Gaztanaga, E.
name: Gerdes, D. W.
name: Gruen, D.
name: Gruendl, R. A.
name: Gschwend, J.
name: Gutierrez, G.
name: Hartley, W. G.
name: Honscheid, K.
name: James, D. J.
name: Johnson, M. W. G.
name: Johnson, M. D.
name: Krause, E.
name: Kuehn, K.
name: Kuhlmann, S.
name: Lahav, O.
name: Li, T. S.
name: Lima, M.
name: Maia, M. A. G.
name: March, M.
name: Marshall, J. L.
name: Menanteau, F.
name: Miquel, R.
name: Neilsen, E.
name: Plazas, A. A.
name: Sanchez, E.
name: Scarpine, V.
name: Schubnell, M.
name: Sevilla-Noarbe, I.
name: Smith, M.
name: Smith, R. C.
name: Sobreira, F.
name: Suchyta, E.
name: Swanson, M. E. C.
name: Tarle, G.
name: Thomas, R. C.
name: Tucker, D. L.
name: Walker, A. R.
name: Collaboration, DES
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2017
Subjects: subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: 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 $10^3 \rm{Gpc}^{-3}/\rm{year}$, consistent with the $1$ 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 $0.3$. 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.
description: Submitted to ApJL