The AGILE real-time analysis pipelines in the multi-messenger era

TL;DR

This paper discusses AGILE's real-time analysis pipelines that rapidly detect transient events and respond to multi-messenger alerts, enabling timely follow-up observations and scientific discoveries in the multi-messenger era.

Contribution

It introduces the development and deployment of two AGILE pipelines using the RTApipe framework for automated transient detection and multi-messenger alert response.

Findings

Over 50 automated notices sent since 2019 with minimal delay

Hundreds of analyses performed in response to external alerts

Multiple scientific publications resulting from pipeline use

Abstract

In the multi-messenger era, space and ground-based observatories usually develop real-time analysis (RTA) pipelines to rapidly detect transient events and promptly share information with the scientific community to enable follow-up observations. These pipelines can also react to science alerts shared by other observatories through networks such as the Gamma-Ray Coordinates Network (GCN) and the Astronomer's Telegram (ATels). AGILE is a space mission launched in 2007 to study X-ray and gamma-ray phenomena. This contribution presents the technologies used to develop two types of AGILE pipelines using the RTApipe framework and an overview of the main scientific results. The first type performs automated analyses on new AGILE data to detect transient events and automatically sends AGILE notices to the GCN network. Since May 2019, this pipeline has sent more than 50 automated notices with a few minutes delay since data arrival. The second type of pipeline reacts to multi-messenger external alerts (neutrinos, gravitational waves, GRBs, and other transients) received through the GCN network and performs hundreds of analyses searching for counterparts in all AGILE instruments' data. The AGILE Team uses these pipelines to perform fast follow-up of science alerts reported by other facilities, which resulted in the publishing of several ATels and GCN circulars.