It’s about time (domain)! The landscape of stellar and compact-object mergers through a time-domain lens

We live in an era of time-domain surveys that are powerful probes in many astrophysical fields - from multi-messenger astronomy and cosmology to studies of our own Galaxy. In this talk, I will describe how these surveys can be used to explore the landscape of stellar and compact object mergers. These mergers offer extraordinary laboratories to study gravitational waves, binary stellar evolution, dust formation and the origins of the heaviest elements in the universe. Yet, many gaps persist in our understanding of the wide spectrum of outcomes resulting from these mergers, that range from peculiar explosions to variable stars. I will describe results from searches for merging neutron stars (that are discovered by LIGO), massive stars, and white dwarfs using the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), Palomar Gattini IR (PGIR) and the newly commissioned WINTER surveyors at the Palomar Observatory in California. For each class of mergers, I will discuss insights these samples provide about the formation, evolution and final fates of their progenitor binary systems. In closing, I will describe the exciting potential of upcoming time-domain surveys, when combined with LIGO-India, in significantly improving our view of the merger landscape.