Roman CCS White Paper: Options to Increase the Coverage Area of Prism Time Series in the High-Latitude Time Domain Core Community Survey

TL;DR

This white paper explores how adjusting prism cadence and exposure time can expand prism coverage in high-latitude time domain surveys, enhancing transient detection and analysis for supernova cosmology and rare transient studies.

Contribution

It introduces new options for increasing prism coverage by modifying cadence and exposure time, improving the completeness of spectral time series in high-latitude surveys.

Findings

Adjusting prism cadence improves transient coverage.

Longer exposure times increase spectral data completeness.

Changes impact supernova cosmology and transient classification.

Abstract

The current reference High-latitude time domain survey increases the completeness of transients with prism temporal time series data by adjusting the ratio of prism-to-imaging time. However, there are two other nobs that allow for a more complete prism coverage: prism cadence and exposure time. In this white paper, we discuss how changes to the prism cadence and exposure time -- in order to increase the fraction of observed transients with spectral time series -- affect supernova cosmology, transient typing and template building, and the study of rare transients.