A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
PISCOLA: a data-driven transient light-curve fitter
Authors: Müller-Bravo Tomás E., Sullivan Mark, Smith Matthew, Frohmaier Chris, Gutiérrez Claudia P., Wiseman Philip, Zontou Zoe
Publication year: 2022
Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Article number: stab3065
Volume: 512
Issue: 3
First page : 3266
Last page: 3283
eISSN: 1365-2966
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab3065
Publication's open availability at the time of reporting: No Open Access
Publication channel's open availability : Partially Open Access publication channel
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/68079427
Self-archived copy's licence: other license
Self-archived copy's version: Final draft
Forthcoming time-domain surveys, such as the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time, will vastly increase samples of supernovae (SNe) and other optical transients, requiring new data-driven techniques to analyse their photometric light curves. Here, we present the 'Python for Intelligent Supernova-COsmology Light-curve Analysis' (PISCOLA), an open source data-driven light-curve fitter using Gaussian Processes that can estimate rest-frame light curves of transients without the need for an underlying light-curve template. We test PISCOLA on large-scale simulations of type Ia SNe (SNe Ia) to validate its performance, and show it successfully retrieves rest-frame peak magnitudes for average survey cadences of up to 7 days. We also compare to the existing SN Ia light-curve fitter SALT2 on real data, and find only small (but significant) disagreements for different light-curve parameters. As a proof-of-concept of an application of PISCOLA, we decomposed and analysed the PISCOLA rest-frame light-curves of SNe Ia from the Pantheon SN Ia sample with Non-Negative Matrix Factorization. Our new parametrization provides a similar performance to existing light-curve fitters such as SALT2. We further derived a SN Ia colour law from PISCOLA fits over ~3500 to 7000Å, and find agreement with the SALT2 colour law and with reddening laws with total-to-selective extinction ratio RV ≲ 3.1....
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