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

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.

7 pages, 2 figures. Submitted to the ApJS Rubin Cadence Focus Issue

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• Dwarf AGNs from Optical Variability for the Origins of Seeds (DAVOS): Insights from the Dark Energy Survey Deep Fields
• The LSST era of supermassive black holes accretion-disk reverberation mapping
• Young stellar objects, accretion disks, and their variability with Rubin Observatory LSST
• Dwarf AGNs from Variability for the Origins of Seeds (DAVOS): Optical Variability of Broad-line Dwarf AGNs from the Zwicky Transient Facility