{
  "abstract": "We present MAGIKS, a multimodal framework for gravitational-wave (GW)-triggered kilonova identification that formulates counterpart search as query-conditioned gallery retrieval. Following an align-before-fuse design, MAGIKS combines GW source parameters and sky-localization maps with irregularly sampled multiband optical light curves and sky coordinates. A time-aware supervised contrastive objective provides coarse cross-modal alignment, while dual cross-attention evaluates consistency between optical coordinates and GW localization, and between GW parameters and optical evolution. We train and evaluate MAGIKS on simulated binary neutron star and neutron star-black hole mergers, Rubin Observatory kilonova light curves from regular survey observations and target-of-opportunity follow-up, GW-detected mergers without Rubin-detectable kilonova counterparts, and realistic non-kilonova contaminants. In independent galleries with one true counterpart and time- and sky-compatible distractors, MAGIKS outperforms optical-only and sky-localization-only ranking, with increasing gains as galleries grow. At 5000 candidates, it ranks the counterpart first for 39.8% of queries, versus 4.8% and 0.2% for these baselines. In a GW170817 study, we generate counterfactual Rubin observations using released GW parameters and three-dimensional localization, the measured counterpart position, and host distance. At the same gallery size, MAGIKS achieves top-1 and top-10 retrieval rates of 87.3% and 95.7%. It correctly classifies 94.2% of associated and non-associated GW-optical pairs. In a separate crossed-pair experiment, its matching score responds significantly to controlled changes in all five tested GW parameters. These results support GW-conditioned kilonova candidate prioritisation for future multi-messenger follow-up.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.41119",
  "author_total": 7,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Bingzhou Gao"
    },
    {
      "name": "Weichangfeng Guo"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jingqi Zhang"
    },
    {
      "name": "Alistair McLeod"
    },
    {
      "name": "Zhengyan Liu"
    },
    {
      "name": "Linqing Wen"
    },
    {
      "name": "Wen Zhao"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/88bbpmmbgpbz7.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.41119",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "88bbpmmbgpbz7",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41119",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "LicenseRef-arXiv-nonexclusive-1.0",
  "licence_label": "arXiv licence",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "astro-ph.HE"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "astro-ph.IM"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.41119",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-30",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/88bbpmmbgpbz7.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-02T12:21:15Z",
      "native_id": "2610.41119",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41119"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "astronomy",
      "origin": "arxiv:astro-ph.HE",
      "subfield": "high-energy-astrophysics"
    },
    {
      "field": "astronomy",
      "origin": "arxiv:astro-ph.IM",
      "subfield": "instrumentation-methods"
    }
  ],
  "title": "MAGIKS: Multimodal Alignment and Gravitational-Wave-Conditioned Interaction for Kilonova Search",
  "title_text": "MAGIKS: Multimodal Alignment and Gravitational-Wave-Conditioned Interaction for Kilonova Search",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-04T15:20:51Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/88bbpmmbgpbz7",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}