LSST Science Book, Version 2.0

Abstract

Prepared by the LSST Science Collaborations, with contributions from the LSST Project. PrefaceMajor advances in our understanding of the Universe over the history of astronomy have often arisen from dramatic improvements in our ability to observe the sky to greater depth, in previously unexplored wavebands, with higher precision, or with improved spatial, spectral, or temporal resolution. Aided by rapid progress in information technology, current sky surveys are again changing the way we view and study the Universe, and the next-generation instruments, and the surveys that will be made with them, will maintain this revolutionary progress. Substantial progress in the important scientific problems of the next decade (determining the nature of dark energy and dark matter, studying the evolution of galaxies and the structure of our own Milky Way, opening up the time domain to discover faint variable objects, and mapping both the inner and outer Solar System) all require wide-field repeated deep imaging of the sky in optical bands.The wide-fast-deep science requirement leads to a single wide-field telescope and camera which can repeatedly survey the sky with deep short exposures. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), a dedicated telecope with an effective aperture of 6.7 meters and a field of view of 9.6 deg 2 , will make major contributions to all these scientific areas and more. It will carry out a survey of 20,000 deg 2 of the sky in six broad photometric bands, imaging each region of sky roughly 2000 times (1000 pairs of back-to-back 15-sec exposures) over a ten-year survey lifetime.The LSST project will deliver fully calibrated survey data to the United States scientific community and the public with no proprietary period. Near real-time alerts for transients will also be provided worldwide. A goal is worldwide participation in all data products. The survey will enable comprehensive exploration of the Solar System beyond the Kuiper Belt, new understanding of the structure of our Galaxy and that of the Local Group, and vast opportunities in cosmology and galaxy evolution using data for billions of distant galaxies. Since many of these science programs will involve the use of the world's largest non-proprietary database, a key goal is maximizing the usability of the data. Experience with previous surveys is that often their most exciting scientific results were unanticipated at the time that the survey was designed; we fully expect this to be the case for the LSST as well.The purpose of this Science Book is to examine and document in detail science goals, opportunities, and capabilities that will be provided by the LSST. The book addresses key questions that will be confronted by the LSST survey, and it poses new questions to be addressed by future study. It contains previously available material (including a number of White Papers submitted to the ASTRO2010 Decadal Survey) as well as new results from a year-long campaign of study and evaluation. This book does not attempt to be complete; there are many ...

Cosmological constraints from weak lensing peak statistics with Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Stripe 82 Survey

“…Ongoing surveys, such as DES (The Dark Energy Survey Collaboration 2005), HSC (Hyper Suprime-Cam Design Review 2009), and KiDS (de Jong et al 2013), will expand the survey area to a few thousands square degrees. Future ones, such as Euclid (Amendola et al 2013) and LSST (Abell et al 2009), will target at nearly half of the sky of about 20, 000 deg 2 . The statistical capability of weak lensing studies will increase tremendously.…”

Probing cosmology with weak lensing Minkowski functionals

“…[43] and Eq. (3.7) in [44]). Once noise in each pixel is added, we smooth the maps with a finite version of a 2D Gaussian filter, with the kernel around every pixel φ 0 ,…”

Cosmology in Mirror Twin Higgs and neutrino masses

“…Even if the neutrino sector fully respects the Z 2 symmetry, decays to SM states are preferred because of the hierarchy of electroweak vevs f > v, with the result that the visible sector is left at a higher temperature than the mirror sector. 1 In this model the mirror neutrinos are significantly heavier than their SM counterparts, resulting in a sizable contribution to the overall cosmological mass density in neutrinos that can be detected by future probes of large scale structure such as DES [45], LSST [46] and DESI [47]. This framework for neutrino masses therefore offers a natural resolution to the cosmological problems of the original proposal, while leading to interesting predictions for upcoming experiments.…”