Optimizing searches for electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave triggers

TL;DR

This paper systematically compares various tiling and scheduling algorithms for electromagnetic follow-up of gravitational wave events, highlighting significant efficiency differences and emphasizing the importance of optimal search strategies.

Contribution

It provides the first systematic comparison of tiling and time allocation schemes for electromagnetic counterpart searches, identifying key factors affecting detection efficiency.

Findings

Differences of a factor of 2 or more in efficiency among algorithms.

Optimal tiling and scheduling significantly improve detection probability.

Careful selection of algorithms enhances future gravitational-wave follow-up surveys.

Abstract

With the detection of a binary neutron star system and its corresponding electromagnetic counterparts, a new window of transient astronomy has opened. Due to the size of the error regions, which can span hundreds to thousands of square degrees, there are significant benefits to optimizing tilings for these large sky areas. The rich science promised by gravitational-wave astronomy has led to the proposal for a variety of tiling and time allocation schemes, and for the first time, we make a systematic comparison of some of these methods. We find that differences of a factor of 2 or more in efficiency are possible, depending on the algorithm employed. For this reason, for future surveys searching for electromagnetic counterparts, care should be taken when selecting tiling, time allocation, and scheduling algorithms to maximize the probability of counterpart detection.