The simulated catalogue of optical transients and correlated hosts (SCOTCH)

As we observe a rapidly growing number of astrophysical transients, we learn more about the diverse host galaxy environments in which they occur. Host galaxy information can be used to purify samples of cosmological Type Ia supernovae, uncover the progenitor systems of individual classes, and facilitate low-latency follow-up of rare and peculiar explosions. In this work, we develop a novel data-driven methodology to simulate the time-domain sky that includes detailed modeling of the probability density function for multiple transient classes conditioned on host galaxy magnitudes, colours, star formation rates, and masses. We have designed these simulations to optimize photometric classification and analysis in upcoming large synoptic surveys. We integrate host galaxy information into the SNANA simulation framework to construct the Simulated Catalogue of Optical Transients and Correlated Hosts (SCOTCH), a publicly-available catalogue of 5 million idealized transient light curves in LSST passbands and their host galaxy properties over the redshift range $0
Comment: 30 pages, 21 figures. Updated to reflect version published in MNRAS Vol. 520, Issue 2. This version improves the treatment of transient-host offsets and AGN host correlations. Associated SCOTCH files are available through Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7563623