Discovering the Most Enigmatic Transient Phenomena in the Time-Domain

在天体物理学中，观测到的变化相对快速且持续时间较短的现象被称为“瞬变”，与恒星和星系等更稳定的物体相区别。 瞬变天体物理事件是过去世纪一些最有趣的发现背后的驱动力之一：黑洞，中子星，暗能量，中微子和宇宙射线。新发现的瞬变类已经为引力波、磁星或高磁化中子星的诞生以及通过r过程产生重原子元素等课题提供了深入的见解。 伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校的一个研究小组将开展一个项目，（1）通过一项新的、新颖的宽场调查来描述神秘的瞬态事件：年轻超新星实验（YSE）（2）详细描述了这些“外来”瞬变的祖先和爆炸，（3）产生了新的异常检测方法，包括公民科学的无监督和半监督学习，以及（4）在维拉C.鲁宾天文台。 公民科学是该项目的核心，研究人员将通过Zooniverse平台吸引参与者，从而继续建立公众对天体物理瞬变和LSST的参与。由于跟踪瞬变事件的光谱时间有限，最高的回报将来自于将资源集中在最稀有的天体物理对象上。随着我们从当前的调查中发现越来越多的瞬态事件，在其TB级的数据中识别奇异事件需要新的方法。该研究小组将利用年轻超新星实验的观测结果，通过新颖的异常检测技术来识别罕见和不寻常的事件。YSE将通过提供额外的颜色信息和更好的时间采样来增加来自Zwicky瞬态设施（ZTF）的公共数据，使其成为发现奇异瞬态的理想测试。该团队将在Pan-STARRS和DES调查的档案数据上部署改进的异常检测方法以进行验证。这项工作将为鲁宾的操作提供坚实的基础，异常检测过滤器将部署在NSF的NOIRLab ANTARES事件代理系统上，使LSST的时域科学合作能够找到更多这些神秘的来源。在这个研究项目的最后，该团队希望能够对单个事件以及大量的外来瞬变及其物理特性进行表征。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In astrophysics, observed phenomena with relatively rapid variation and short duration are known as “transients,” as distinguished from more steady objects such as stars and galaxies. Transient astrophysical events have been one of the driving forces behind some of the most interesting discoveries of the past century: black holes, neutron stars, dark energy, neutrinos, and cosmic rays. Newly discovered classes of transients have already provided insights into such topics as gravitational waves, the birth of magnetars, or highly magnetized neutron stars, and the creation of heavy atomic elements through the r-process. A research group at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, will undertake a project to (1) characterize enigmatic transient events with a new, novel wide-field survey: the Young Supernova Experiment (YSE) (2) detail the progenitors and explosions of those “exotic” transients, (3) produce new methods for anomaly detection involving unsupervised and semi-supervised learning with citizen science, and (4) prepare for time-domain discovery with the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Citizen-science is central to this project and the researchers will engage participants through the Zooniverse platform, thus continuing to build public engagement with astrophysical transients and the LSST.Given limited spectroscopic time to follow up transient events, the highest returns will come from focusing resources on the rarest astrophysical objects. As we discover ever more transient events from current surveys, identifying exotic events within their terabytes of data requires novel methods. The research group will use observations from the Young Supernova Experiment to identify rare and unusual events with novel anomaly detection techniques. YSE will augment public data from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) by providing additional color information and better time-sampling, making it an ideal test for the discovery of exotic transients. The team will deploy their improved anomaly detection methods on archival data from the Pan-STARRS and DES surveys for validation. The work will provide a strong foundation for Rubin operations, and the anomaly detection filter will be deployed on NSF’s NOIRLab ANTARES event broker system, allowing LSST’s time-domain science collaborations to find more of these enigmatic sources. At the end of this research project, the team expects to have characterized individual events as well as the larger population of exotic transients and their physics.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.