A Roman Project Infrastructure Team to Support Cosmological Measurements with Type Ia Supernovae
Co-PI: Dan Scolnic / Duke University
Co-PI: Rebekah Hounsell / University of Maryland – Baltimore County
Co-PI: Benjamin Rose / Benjamin Rose / Baylor University
Co-PI: David Rubin / University of Hawaii – Honolulu
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman) is NASA’s next large flagship mission due for launch no later than May 2027. This mission will conduct a generation-defining experiment in time-domain astronomy, with a focus on Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). The core community survey planned for Roman which focuses on collecting data for SNe Ia is the High Latitude Time Domain survey. A key goal of this survey is to use the SN Ia data collected to measure the accelerated expansion of the universe and so better constrain the nature of dark energy. As such Type Ia SNe are highlighted in the NASA Roman ROSES call as one of the main cosmological probes.
In this Project Infrastructure Team (PIT) proposal, we present a pixels-to-cosmology plan that will satisfy the requirements for cosmological experiments with SNe Ia. As part of this work, a transient discovery and photometry/spectroscopy pipeline will be created, enabling a wide range of science that can be utilized by any Wide Field Science (WFS) group in addition to the broader Roman community.
In this proposal, we provide a list of deliverables that will ensure the completion of the Roman science requirements and goals regarding Type Ia SNe, as outlined in Section 3.4 of the ROSES call. These deliverables include fully developed pipelines for photometry and calibration products at the pixel level, the extraction of light curves and prism spectra, the creation of data products including transient alert streams and precision scene-modeling photometry catalogs, the creation of software to model SNe Ia information for standardization, and a survey optimization code that can be enmeshed with other teams as part of a broader community product. We will focus on robust software pipelines including emphasis on open development, validation, documentation and ease for the broader Roman community. Furthermore, we include the top industry-standard project-management tools for both internal organization and external liaising with the Roman Project, and emphasize for all our deliverables a series of validation techniques and code/data releases, in addition to documentation for the broader community.
As our focus for this PIT is on infrastructure pipelines to support SN Ia cosmology, we outline what will be done by our team and how that ties to the work of the Science Centers, WFS teams, and the broader community. Our focus will be on a modular software infrastructure that other groups can utilize, be that on the latest ground-based discoveries or theoretical expectations. This work is oriented towards the stringent requirements of SNe Ia cosmology, but our work here can be leveraged to study a wide range of other classes of transients like strongly lensed supernovae, kilonovae, and other fast transients.
As part of the proposal, we present a plan for engagement with the two Science Centers and with the broader community in a series of workshops, data challenges, and regular updates. We also present a Diversity-Equity-and-Inclusion plan that establishes relationships with nearby universities with large populations of underrepresented minorities. We will use this plan to establish a pathway in astronomy for these individuals, running from the undergraduate level to PhD, all while leveraging the long-term baseline of the Roman mission.