Lifting the veil: rare and unknown astrophysical transients in the era of Rubin LSST and artificial intelligence
Date
2023
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is scheduled to begin operation in 2025. Rubin Observatory will conduct an ambitious sky survey, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), that will scan the entire Southern Hemisphere sky every 3-4 nights for over ten years in six photometric bands. With its unique survey capability in the time domain and exquisite image quality, LSST will unlock a vast and diverse range of scientific investigations that will dramatically improve our understanding of the Universe. Rubin will enable the study of phenomena that are rarely observed today, and perhaps the most exciting promise of LSST will be making unexpected discoveries of astrophysical events and phenomena that have never been seen before or even predicted from theory, which may challenge our physical models. This dissertation focuses on preparing for the upcoming sky survey and the application of modern analytic and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to identify, analyze, and characterize rare and unknown transient events that will be discovered by the LSST. My work enables an understanding of how observing choices influence serendipitous discoveries and the detection of a rare and unique class of transients, Light Echoes, for which I developed AI-driven methods for their discovery and investigated how analytical choices influence their spectral analysis.
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Keywords
Light Echoes, Rubin LSST, Transients, Astrophysical events, Sky survey, Spectral analysis