Microlensing22, LSST, and the 2018 Whitepaper-proposals

Science
#1

Here are some topics we (@rstreet and @willclarkson) have identified to make progress / provoke the microlensing community to contribute to LSST’s success for microlensing science.

There will be a short LSST breakout at Microlensing22 later today (~13:00 Saturday Jan 27), but we want the conversation to continue after the meeting - and there are far too many topics to cover in half an hour!

Input of any kind is welcome, we hope this will help jump-start the conversation.

cc @wadawson @davidciardi @lundmb @jgizis @fed @mtpenny

1. The Inner Plane & microlensing - Special Program 2018 proposal (@rstreet et al.)

  • Current status, elements
  • What are the most critical science cases?
    • What does this imply for observing strategy? (Filter balance, cadence, total time request)
  • Interaction with the Observing Strategy Whitepaper
  • What needs doing to prepare? What simulations are needed? What is easy/hard/practical in the time before the (~October 2018) deadline?

2. LSST microlensing and the Magellanic Clouds - SP 2018 proposal (?? et al.)

  • What efforts are already underway? (cc @knutago @nidever)
    • If none yet, who wants to lead a new proposal?
  • Mroz & Poleski (arXiv:1712.03986) explore planetary microlensing towards the SMC with possibly specialized cadence - what other microlensing-relevant prediction/observation is being done / has been done?
  • UPDATE via @wadawson - here is the Szkody et al. Deep Drilling whitepaper including the Magellanic clouds

3. LSST and microlensing science (learn from the microlensing community)

  • What is the discovery space for LSST? (Complementarity with OGLE, KMTNET, MOA, etc.)
  • What about microlensing in the Galactic disk?
    • What about the outer disk (where LSST will do Wide-Fast-Deep)?
    • Is anyone repeating Rahal et al. 2009 (EROS2), or is this wide open to LSST?
  • How best to coordinate with the WFIRST team?
  • What is standard practice to quantify LSST as providing complimentary information (e.g. color before and during microlensing event, a la Dave Ciardi @ LSST 2017 and before)?
  • Is there a consensus regarding population models in 3D?
  • What is easy to simulate? What is difficult?
  • What efforts are already underway to understand LSST and microlensing?

4. What new microlensing observations are needed? (learn from the microlensing community)

  • Is there a consensus for e.g. filter choice?
  • Does the cadence divide simply by mass scale, as below, or is there a more complex dependency? E.g.
    • IMBH (months-years, good for main-survey);
    • Stellar / isolated black hole microlensing (months-year);
    • Planetary (probably requires special cadence?)
  • Translation of microlensing science cases into OpSim proposals (see the “Suggest a new OpSim request” page for guidelines)
    • Interaction with Dan Rothchild’s ALTSched OpSim-alternate?
  • Production of project-friendly Figures of Merit from existing microlens investigations?

5. Your suggestions here!

  • suggestion 1…
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Notes from March 2018 SMWLV telecon
#2

Below are the (highly abbreviated) main takeaways I got from the “LSST” breakout session at Microlensing 22. Click here for a more detailed summary (publicly-viewable google doc). Comments are welcome. Many thanks to all those who attended!

  1. LSST’s discovery space is probably the ultra-wide field cases like the galactic plane, and/or long-timescale microlensing event (paralensing and BH dark matter).

  2. However, the degree of “competition” with other ground-based surveys is not clear, as there are no declared microlensing ground-based surveys in the 2022-2032 timeframe (planning horizon too far for the moment?). For the moment, let’s focus SP proposals on the discovery space that is unique to LSST.

  3. There were no volunteers from the room to lead a Magellanic Clouds (MCs) Special Programs proposal, so let’s approach the MC’s DDF whitepaper author and the OSWP MC’s chapter co-authors first to lead such a proposal.

  4. LSST microlensing cadence on the order of 1 exposure per day would be a good match for most stellar-timescale (or longer) microlensing cases - someone should propose this as an OpSim run. Having most of the exposures in the same filter is probably essential, but with a handful of exposures at other filters for characterization.

  5. Preparation of calculations of microlensing rates for any SP proposal by October probably ARE practical, but only if the few people who work on those rates have time to do it.

(cc @pepper @szkody @drothchild @donachie @n.rattenbury @MelissaGraham @ivezic )

#3

Hi, I have been in touch with Knute Olsen (NOAO) about putting in a white paper for minisurvey of the Clouds (combining my DDP and his Survey proposals). I want the cadence for variables (which should work for microlensing as well) and he wants the depth and filters. I’m assuming he will lead the paper but we will need others to help write.
Paula

#4

Hi Paula - great!!

@knutago , do you want to lead this whitepaper/proposal?

#5

Hi Will and Paula,

Yes, I can lead the organization of it, will definitely need help from contributors!

Knut

#6

@knutago,
Happy to help with some dark matter science contribution.

#7

Great! I have some simple prototype metric material (at the link below) which might help…
https://github.com/willclarkson/lsstScratchWIC/blob/master/notebooks/lsstMicrolensYieldSimple.ipynb

… and I believe @lundmb has also been working on some cadence-based (as opposed to population-simulation based) microlensing metrics.

#8

It would also be worthwhile looping Przemek Mroz (pmroz@astrouw.edu.pl) into the effort. He has a recent paper out advocating for LSST to observe the SMC: https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.03986

#9

Hi Will - I agree! @jgizis, there are a few people we ought to encourage to join Community… is there a channel to encourage people to join, or do we just email them and encourage them to sign on?