The Vera C. Rubin Observatory's LSST Camera (LSSTCam) pixel response has been characterized using laboratory measurements with a grid of artificial stars. We quantify the contributions to photometry, ...centroid, point-spread function size, and shape measurement errors due to small anomalies in the LSSTCam CCDs. The main sources of those anomalies are quantum efficiency variations and pixel area variations induced by the amplifier segmentation boundaries and "tree-rings" - circular variations in silicon doping concentration. This laboratory study using artificial stars projected on the sensors shows overall small effects. The residual effects on point-spread function (PSF) size and shape are below \(0.1\%\), meeting the ten-year LSST survey science requirements. However, the CCD mid-line presents distortions that can have a moderate impact on PSF measurements. This feature can be avoided by masking the affected regions. Effects of tree-rings are observed on centroids and PSFs of the artificial stars and the nature of the effect is confirmed by a study of the flat-field response. Nevertheless, further studies of the full-focal plane with stellar data should more completely probe variations and might reveal new features, e.g. wavelength-dependent effects. The results of this study can be used as a guide for the on-sky operation of LSSTCam.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will begin the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) in 2024, spanning an area of 18,000 square degrees in six bands, with more than 800 observations of each field over ...ten years. The unprecedented data set will enable great advances in the study of the formation and evolution of structure and exploration of physics of the dark universe. The observations will hold clues about the cause for the accelerated expansion of the universe and possibly the nature of dark matter. During the next decade, LSST will be able to confirm or dispute if tensions seen today in cosmological data are due to new physics. New and unexpected phenomena could confirm or disrupt our current understanding of the universe. Findings from LSST will guide the path forward post-LSST. The Rubin Observatory will still be a uniquely powerful facility even then, capable of revealing further insights into the physics of the dark universe. These could be obtained via innovative observing strategies, e.g., targeting new probes at shorter timescales than with LSST, or via modest instrumental changes, e.g., new filters, or through an entirely new instrument for the focal plane. This White Paper highlights some of the opportunities in each scenario from Rubin observations after LSST.
At least a fraction of Gravitational Wave (GW) progenitors are expected to emit an electromagnetic (EM) signal in the form of a short gamma-ray burst (sGRB). Discovering such a transient EM ...counterpart is challenging because the \LIGO/\VIRGO localization region is much larger (several hundreds of square degrees) than the field of view of X-ray, optical and radio telescopes. The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) has a wide field of view (\(\sim 2.4\) sr), and detects \(\sim 2-3\) sGRBs per year above 100 MeV. It can detect them not only during the short prompt phase, but also during their long-lasting high-energy afterglow phase. If other wide-field high-energy instruments such as Fermi-GBM, Swift-BAT or INTEGRAL-ISGRI cannot detect or localize with enough precision an EM counterpart during the prompt phase, the LAT can potentially pinpoint it with \(\lesssim 10\) arcmin accuracy during the afterglow phase. This routinely happens with gamma-ray bursts. Moreover, the LAT will cover the entire localization region within hours of any triggers during normal operations, allowing the \(\gamma\)-ray flux of any EM counterpart to be measured or constrained. We illustrate two new ad hoc methods to search for EM counterparts with the LAT and their application to the GW candidate LVT151012.
The mechanism(s) driving the early- and late-time accelerated expansion of the Universe represent one of the most compelling mysteries in fundamental physics today. The path to understanding the ...causes of early- and late-time acceleration depends on fully leveraging ongoing surveys, developing and demonstrating new technologies, and constructing and operating new instruments. This report presents a multi-faceted vision for the cosmic survey program in the 2030s and beyond that derives from these considerations. Cosmic surveys address a wide range of fundamental physics questions, and are thus a unique and powerful component of the HEP experimental portfolio.
The sky at MeV energies is currently poorly explored. Here we present an innovative mission concept that builds on and improves past and currently proposed missions at such energies. We outline the ...motivations for combining a coded mask and a Compton telescope and we define the scientific goals of such a mission. The Galactic Explorer with a Coded Aperture Mask Compton Telescope (GECCO) is a novel concept for a next-generation telescope covering hard X-ray and soft gamma-ray energies. The potential and importance of this approach that bridges the observational gap in the MeV energy range are presented. With the unprecedented angular resolution of the coded mask telescope combined with the sensitive Compton telescope, a mission such as GECCO can disentangle the discrete sources from the truly diffuse emission. Individual Galactic and extragalactic sources are detected. This also allows to understand the gamma-ray Galactic center excess and the Fermi Bubbles, and to trace the low-energy cosmic rays, and their propagation in the Galaxy. Nuclear and annihilation lines are spatially and spectrally resolved from the continuum emission and from sources, addressing the role of low-energy cosmic rays in star formation and galaxy evolution, the origin of the 511 keV positron line, fundamental physics, and the chemical enrichment in the Galaxy. Such an instrument also detects explosive transient gamma-ray sources, which enable identifying and studying the astrophysical objects that produce gravitational waves and neutrinos in a multi-messenger context. By looking at a poorly explored energy band it also allows discoveries of new astrophysical phenomena.
DESC DC2 Data Release Note LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration; Abolfathi, Bela; Armstrong, Robert ...
arXiv.org,
06/2022
Paper, Journal Article
Odprti dostop
In preparation for cosmological analyses of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (LSST DESC) has created a 300 deg\(^2\) ...simulated survey as part of an effort called Data Challenge 2 (DC2). The DC2 simulated sky survey, in six optical bands with observations following a reference LSST observing cadence, was processed with the LSST Science Pipelines (19.0.0). In this Note, we describe the public data release of the resulting object catalogs for the coadded images of five years of simulated observations along with associated truth catalogs. We include a brief description of the major features of the available data sets. To enable convenient access to the data products, we have developed a web portal connected to Globus data services. We describe how to access the data and provide example Jupyter Notebooks in Python to aid first interactions with the data. We welcome feedback and questions about the data release via a GitHub repository.
Electro-optical testing and characterization of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera focal plane, consisting of 205 charge-coupled devices (CCDs) arranged into ...21 stand-alone Raft Tower Modules (RTMs) and 4 Corner Raft Tower Modules (CRTMs), is currently being performed at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Testing of the camera sensors is performed using a set of custom-built optical projectors, designed to illuminate the full focal plane or specific regions of the focal plane with a series of light illumination patterns: the crosstalk projector, the flat illuminator projector, and the spot grid projector. In addition to measurements of crosstalk, linearity and full well, the ability to project realistically-sized sources, using the spot grid projector, makes possible unique measurements of instrumental signatures such as deferred charge distortions, astrometric shifts due to sensor effects, and the brighter-fatter effect, prior to camera first light. Here we present the optical projector designs and usage, the electro-optical measurements and how these results have been used in testing and improving the LSST Camera instrumental signature removal algorithms.
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) will use five cosmological probes: galaxy clusters, large scale structure, supernovae, strong lensing, and weak ...lensing. This Science Requirements Document (SRD) quantifies the expected dark energy constraining power of these probes individually and together, with conservative assumptions about analysis methodology and follow-up observational resources based on our current understanding and the expected evolution within the field in the coming years. We then define requirements on analysis pipelines that will enable us to achieve our goal of carrying out a dark energy analysis consistent with the Dark Energy Task Force definition of a Stage IV dark energy experiment. This is achieved through a forecasting process that incorporates the flowdown to detailed requirements on multiple sources of systematic uncertainty. Future versions of this document will include evolution in our software capabilities and analysis plans along with updates to the LSST survey strategy.
Data Challenge 1 (DC1) is the first synthetic dataset produced by the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC). DC1 is designed to develop and ...validate data reduction and analysis and to study the impact of systematic effects that will affect the LSST dataset. DC1 is comprised of \(r\)-band observations of 40 deg\(^{2}\) to 10-year LSST depth. We present each stage of the simulation and analysis process: a) generation, by synthesizing sources from cosmological N-body simulations in individual sensor-visit images with different observing conditions; b) reduction using a development version of the LSST Science Pipelines; and c) matching to the input cosmological catalog for validation and testing. We verify that testable LSST requirements pass within the fidelity of DC1. We establish a selection procedure that produces a sufficiently clean extragalactic sample for clustering analyses and we discuss residual sample contamination, including contributions from inefficiency in star-galaxy separation and imperfect deblending. We compute the galaxy power spectrum on the simulated field and conclude that: i) survey properties have an impact of 50\% of the statistical uncertainty for the scales and models used in DC1 ii) a selection to eliminate artifacts in the catalogs is necessary to avoid biases in the measured clustering; iii) the presence of bright objects has a significant impact (2- to 6-\(\sigma\)) in the estimated power spectra at small scales (\(\ell > 1200\)), highlighting the impact of blending in studies at small angular scales in LSST;
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