Foraging with MUSHROOMS: A Mixed-integer Linear Programming Scheduler for Multimessenger Target of Opportunity Searches with the Zwicky Transient Facility
Abstract
Electromagnetic follow-up of gravitational-wave detections is very resource intensive, taking up hours of limited observation time on dozens of telescopes. Creating more efficient schedules for follow-up will lead to a commensurate increase in counterpart location efficiency without using more telescope time. Widely used in operations research and telescope scheduling, mixed-integer linear programming is a strong candidate to produce these higher-efficiency schedules, as it can make use of powerful commercial solvers that find globally optimal solutions to provided problems. We detail a new target-of-opportunity scheduling algorithm designed with Zwicky Transient Facility in mind that uses mixed-integer linear programming. We compare its performance to gwemopt, the tuned heuristic scheduler used by the Zwicky Transient Facility and other facilities during the third LIGO–Virgo gravitational-wave observing run. This new algorithm uses variable-length observing blocks to enforce cadence requirements and to ensure field observability, along with having a secondary optimization step to minimize slew time. We show that by employing a hybrid method utilizing both this scheduler and gwemopt, the previous scheduler used, in concert, we can achieve an average improvement in detection efficiency of 3%–11% over gwemopt alone for a simulated binary neutron star merger data set consistent with LIGO–Virgo's third observing run, highlighting the potential of mixed-integer target of opportunity schedulers for future multimessenger follow-up surveys.
Additional Information
We thank Alexander Criswell for their feedback when writing the abstract. B.P. acknowledges support from a Northeastern Lawrence Co-op Fellowship. M.W.C. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation with grant Nos. PHY-2010970 and OAC-2117997. S.A. acknowledges support from the GROWTH National Science Foundation PIRE grant 1545949.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 116585
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20220826-428674800.767
- PHY-2010970
- NSF
- OAC-2117997
- NSF
- AST-1545949
- NSF
- Created
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2022-08-31Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2022-10-05Created from EPrint's last_modified field