Give Me a Few Hours: Exploring Short Timescales in Rubin Observatory Cadence Simulations

TL;DR

This paper analyzes Rubin Observatory cadence simulations, revealing limitations in temporal resolution that hinder the detection of fast-evolving phenomena, and proposes metrics and approaches to improve short-timescale coverage.

Contribution

It introduces a science-agnostic metric to evaluate short-timescale sensitivity and discusses potential methods to enhance the observatory's ability to detect rapid transient events.

Findings

Cadence simulations are peaked at 22-minute visit pairs.

Current cadence provides limited constraint on intra-night temporal evolution.

Proposed metrics can help optimize observing strategies for fast transients.

Abstract

The limiting temporal resolution of a time-domain survey in detecting transient behavior is set by the time between observations of the same sky area. We analyze the distribution of visit separations for a range of Vera C. Rubin Observatory cadence simulations. Current simulations are strongly peaked at the 22 minute visit pair separation and provide effectively no constraint on temporal evolution within the night. This choice will necessarily prevent Rubin from discovering a wide range of astrophysical phenomena in time to trigger rapid followup. We present a science-agnostic metric to supplement detailed simulations of fast-evolving transients and variables and suggest potential approaches for improving the range of timescales explored.