@article{71541f31ca874826963195f1d7fd2172,
title = "Models and simulations for the photometric lsst astronomical time series classification challenge (Plasticc)",
abstract = "We describe the simulated data sample for the Photometric Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Astronomical Time Series Classification Challenge (PLAsTiCC), a publicly available challenge to classify transient and variable events that will be observed by the LSST, a new facility expected to start in the early 2020s. The challenge was hosted by Kaggle, ran from 2018 September 28 to December 17, and included 1094 teams competing for prizes. Here we provide details of the 18 transient and variable source models, which were not revealed until after the challenge, and release the model libraries at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2612896. We describe the LSST Operations Simulator used to predict realistic observing conditions, and we describe the publicly available SNANA simulation code used to transform the models into observed fluxes and uncertainties in the LSST passbands (ugrizy). Although PLAsTiCC has finished, the publicly available models and simulation tools are being used within the astronomy community to further improve classification, and to study contamination in photometrically identified samples of SN Ia used to measure properties of dark energy. Our simulation framework will continue serving as a platform to improve the PLAsTiCC models, and to develop new models.",
keywords = "Techniques: miscellaneous Online material: color figures",
author = "{The LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration and the Transient and Variable Stars Science Collaboration} and R. Kessler and G. Narayan and A. Avelino and E. Bachelet and R. Biswas and Brown, {P. J.} and Chernoff, {D. F.} and Connolly, {A. J.} and M. Dai and S. Daniel and Stefano, {R. Di} and Drout, {M. R.} and L. Galbany and S. Gonz{\'a}lez-Gait{\'a}n and Graham, {M. L.} and R. Hlo{\v z}ek and Ishida, {E. E.O.} and J. Guillochon and Jha, {S. W.} and Jones, {D. O.} and Mandel, {K. S.} and D. Muthukrishna and A. O{\textquoteright}grady and Peters, {C. M.} and Pierel, {J. R.} and Ponder, {K. A.} and A. Pr{\v s}a and S. Rodney and Villar, {V. A.}",
note = "Funding Information: This work was supported in part by the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago through grant NSF PHY-1125897 and an endowment from the Kavli Foundation and its founder Fred Kavli. R.K. is supported by DOE grant DE-AC02-76CH03000 and NASA grant NNG 17PX03C. This work was completed in part with resources provided by the University of Chicago Research Computing Center. This research at Rutgers University (M.D., S.W.J.) is supported by DOE award DE-SC0011636 and NSF award AST-1615455. D.O.J. is supported by a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Santa Cruz. S.G acknowledges the support from the FCT project PTDC/FIS-AST/31546/2017. D.C. acknowledges the John Templeton Foundation New Frontiers Program grant No. 37426 (University of Chicago) and FP050136-B (Cornell University); NSF grant No. 1417132. A.J.C acknowledges support by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, under Award Number DESC-0011635, and partial support from the Washington Research Foundation and the DIRAC Institute. S.A.R. and J.D.R.P. acknowledge support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through a NASA EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Development award administered by the South Carolina Space Grant Consortium. Funding Information: We thank Carlton Baugh and the The Institute for Computational Cosmology for access to their simulated mock catalogs. This material is based upon work supported in part by the National Science Foundation through Cooperative Agreement 1258333 managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), and the Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC0276SF00515 with the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Additional LSST funding comes from private donations, grants to universities, and in-kind support from LSSTC Institutional Members. Funding Information: The DESC acknowledges ongoing support from the Institut National de Physique Nucl{\'e}aire et de Physique des Particules in France; the Science & Technology Facilities Council in the United Kingdom; and the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the LSST Corporation in the United States. DESC uses resources of the IN2P3 Computing Center (CC-IN2P3–Lyon/Villeurbanne—France) funded by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231; STFC DiRAC HPC Facilities, funded by UK BIS National E-infrastructure capital grants; and the UK particle physics grid, supported by the GridPP Collaboration. This work was performed in part under DOE Contract DE-AC02-76SF00515. Funding Information: We thank Kaggle for selecting PLAsTiCC to run under the Research Competition category, providing expertise and guidance throughout the implementation of this project and for funding the main prizes. We also thank the entire data science community responsible for solidifying the tradition of data challenges and, specially, all the Kaggle participants who engaged in PLAsTiCC. PLAsTiCC was funded through LSST Corporation grant award #2017-03 and administered by the University of Toronto. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific.",
year = "2019",
month = sep,
doi = "10.1088/1538-3873/ab26f1",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "131",
journal = "Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific",
issn = "0004-6280",
publisher = "University of Chicago",
number = "1003",
}