Astro 2020 Science White Paper: Joint Gravitational Wave and Electromagnetic Astronomy with LIGO and LSST in the 2020's

Understand

The blossoming field of joint gravitational wave and electromagnetic (GW-EM) astronomy is one of the most promising in astronomy.

• The first, and only, joint GW-EM event GW170817 provided remarkable science returns that still continue to this day.
• Continued growth in this field requires increasing the sample size of joint GW-EM detections.
• In this white paper, we outline the case for using some percentage of LSST survey time for dedicated target-of-opportunity follow up of GW triggers in order to efficiently and rapidly identify optical counterparts.