LSST Science Book, Version 2.0
Reviewed by Pithpith:BGCIFPPGopen to challenge →
read the original abstract
A survey that can cover the sky in optical bands over wide fields to faint magnitudes with a fast cadence will enable many of the exciting science opportunities of the next decade. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will have an effective aperture of 6.7 meters and an imaging camera with field of view of 9.6 deg^2, and will be devoted to a ten-year imaging survey over 20,000 deg^2 south of +15 deg. Each pointing will be imaged 2000 times with fifteen second exposures in six broad bands from 0.35 to 1.1 microns, to a total point-source depth of r~27.5. The LSST Science Book describes the basic parameters of the LSST hardware, software, and observing plans. The book discusses educational and outreach opportunities, then goes on to describe a broad range of science that LSST will revolutionize: mapping the inner and outer Solar System, stellar populations in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, the structure of the Milky Way disk and halo and other objects in the Local Volume, transient and variable objects both at low and high redshift, and the properties of normal and active galaxies at low and high redshift. It then turns to far-field cosmological topics, exploring properties of supernovae to z~1, strong and weak lensing, the large-scale distribution of galaxies and baryon oscillations, and how these different probes may be combined to constrain cosmological models and the physics of dark energy.
This paper has not been read by Pith yet.
Forward citations
Cited by 60 Pith papers
-
First detection of the moving lens effect with ACT and DESI LS
First observational detection of the moving lens effect via cross-correlation of ACT CMB temperature with DESI galaxies, yielding amplitude b_ML = 1.24 ± 0.26 at 4.8σ consistent with halo-model prediction.
-
Strong Lensing Tomography: Double and pseudo multi-source plane strong gravitational lensing to constrain dark energy
Pseudo double-source plane lenses enable statistical strong lensing tomography that forecasts σ(w0) ~ 0.45 from the LSST 10-year photometric sample in flat w0waCDM cosmology.
-
The impact of stellar binaries and star cluster dynamics on pair-instability supernovae
Binary interactions and cluster dynamics boost PISN rates by up to 3x versus single stars, enabling constraints on stellar-wind mass loss and galaxy metallicity distributions.
-
Modeling the impact of filter-substrate refraction in the Roman point spread function
Filter-substrate refraction causes dominant lateral shifts yielding 0.3-0.4% PSF size and ellipticity residuals across most Roman bands that exceed weak lensing requirements by an order of magnitude, while longitudina...
-
Fewer simulations, sharper covariances: Reducing mock covariance noise with Zeldovich approximation control variates
Control variates with Zeldovich mocks reduce covariance matrix variance by up to an order of magnitude on large scales in DESI-like mocks.
-
Prospect of Measuring the Cosmic Dipole by Strongly Lensed Gravitational Waves Associated with Galaxy Surveys
Simulations forecast that 10 years of Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer data could detect the cosmic dipole magnitude using strongly lensed GW events, with tighter bounds from combining double, triple, and quadru...
-
SDSS-V: Revealing a weak accretion state in X-ray selected red quasars
Red quasars are intrinsically X-ray weak with low alpha_OX values, tracing a distinct evolutionary stage of suppressed black hole accretion relative to stellar mass growth.
-
Measurement of the galaxy-velocity power spectrum of DESI tracers with the kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect using DESI DR2 and ACT DR6
DESI DR2 and ACT DR6 data yield 17σ LRG-velocity, 8.3σ ELG-velocity, and 6.8σ QSO-velocity detections plus a 3.1σ velocity-velocity signal, producing f_NL^loc = 15.9_{-34.4}^{+34.6} from the velocity field.
-
Euclid preparation. Decomposing components of the extragalactic background light using multi-band intensity mapping cross-correlations
Multi-band EBL intensity mapping cross-correlated with cosmic shear and galaxy clustering recovers IHL, IGL, and EoR parameters with 10-35% smaller uncertainties than intensity mapping alone.
-
SN 2025ogs: A Spectroscopically-Normal Type Ia Supernova at z = 2 as a Benchmark for Redshift Evolution
SN 2025ogs is a spectroscopically normal Type Ia supernova at z=2.05 whose luminosity distance and properties are consistent with low-z standards and current LambdaCDM constraints.
-
Constraining dark matter halo profiles with symbolic regression
Exhaustive symbolic regression on mock weak lensing excess surface density data recovers NFW profiles at 5% fractional errors with as few as 20 clusters but favors simpler functions at higher uncertainties because err...
-
CosmoGen: A genetic algorithm framework for the exploration of dark energy dynamics
CosmoGen employs evolutionary algorithms for symbolic regression to generate dark energy fluid models that alleviate S8 and H0 tensions, with Bayesian analysis of one model showing tension relief though weaker prefere...
-
Interpretable Human-Label-Free Deep Learning for Real-Bogus Classification with Uncertainty Quantification
A dual-network asymmetric co-teaching framework trained on injected transients and contaminated survey data achieves human-label-free real-bogus classification with calibrated uncertainty.
-
Point spread function wavefront recovery from in-focus stellar observations
WaveDiff with wavefront feature projection recovers WFE from noisy undersampled in-focus observations at ~3% error, a tenfold improvement over the prior version.
-
Assembly bias and the redshift evolution of intrinsic alignments for LRGs
FLAMINGO simulation analysis shows IA amplitude for LRGs depends on halo assembly history and exhibits redshift evolution beyond mass effects, yielding an empirical mass-redshift model.
-
Consistency of DES and DESI distances and the Standard Cosmological Model
DESI recovers the CMB-constrained parameter combination at sub-percent precision; high-redshift DES supernovae fit flat Lambda CDM while a 0.05 mag offset in the low-redshift anchor sample may be systematic, supportin...
-
Learning the Universe: Posterior Reliability of Neural Generative Models in High-Dimensional Field-Level Inference of Cosmic Initial Conditions
Generative models for cosmological field-level inference can reproduce posterior means and cross-correlations yet fail to capture correct uncertainty geometry when validated against HMC reference samples.
-
AKRA 3.0: A matrix-free Inversion Framework for Weak Lensing Mass Mapping and Its Application to DES Y3 Data
AKRA 3.0 uses conjugate gradient to solve the normal equations for weak lensing mass mapping, producing the highest-resolution DES Y3 convergence map to date and demonstrating unbiased power spectra extracted directly...
-
Dynamics and detectability of long-lived non-accretion phases for massive black hole binaries in cold, thermally regulating disks
Self-consistent thermal regulation in circumbinary disks permits long-lived non-accretion phases that suppress binary feeding rates toward the Eddington limit while leaving optical/near-IR detectability intact.
-
(The) Wiggles going non-linear
Calibrates a one-parameter semi-analytic damping model for oscillatory primordial power spectrum features using N-body simulations and validates sub-percent accuracy via GPR emulation when modulation frequency is high enough.
-
Photometry is all you need: supernova classification as a mixing problem
Photometry-only classification of SNe Ia and Ibc reaches >=90% accuracy by fitting a semi-analytical decay model to light curves and using GMMs on the resulting parameter distributions to estimate mixing fractions wit...
-
Cosmological Constraints from Bias-Robust Wavelet Scattering Statistics for Stage-IV Galaxy Surveys
The paper develops R^wst, a bias-robust wavelet scattering statistic that delivers unbiased constraints on cosmological parameters and improves degeneracy breaking versus the two-point correlation function via simulat...
-
A Systematic Study of Behavioral Cloning for Scientific Data Annotation
Introduces 9 synthetic annotation tasks and benchmarks for behavioral cloning, finding hierarchical skill learning, scaling benefits, effective multi-task pretraining, and shared internal representations of task phase...
-
Reassessing the Statistical Necessity of Stellar Velocity Anisotropy in Strong-Lensing Cosmology with Lens-by-Lens Photometric Constraints
Analysis of 107 matched strong-lensing and supernova pairs with lens-specific luminosity slopes finds that free stellar anisotropy is statistically required and reveals negative redshift evolution in early-type galaxy...
-
Lossless Compression of Cosmological Information from Type Ia Supernova Distance Measurements
Compressing SN Ia distance-redshift data to eleven Gaussian log r_p(z) points with covariance is shown to be operationally lossless for cosmological inference across multiple models and datasets.
-
On the origin of the environmental step: A BayeSN view of the ZTF SN Ia DR2
BayeSN analysis of ZTF SN Ia DR2 data shows a persistent ~0.1 mag environmental step that is intrinsic to the supernovae, not explained by differing dust properties.
-
A unified harmonic framework for dark siren cosmology
The GW-galaxy cross-correlation method, unified with spectral sirens in a harmonic framework, can measure H0 to 1% and Omega_m to 5% precision with 2 years of data from next-generation detectors like Einstein Telescop...
-
The first AKRA mass map reconstruction from HSC Y1 data
AKRA produces the first unbiased kappa maps from HSC Y1 shear catalogs, with simulation tests confirming no bias in power spectrum, variance, skewness, and PDF statistics.
-
Parity Violation in Galaxy Shapes: Primordial Non-Gaussianity
The parity-odd intrinsic alignment power spectrum probes the collapsed limit of the parity-odd primordial trispectrum and can tighten constraints on parity-violating PNG when bias parameters are calibrated from N-body...
-
LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products
LSST will image 18,000 square degrees of sky about 800 times across six bands over 10 years to a coadded depth of r~27.5, producing a public database of 40 billion objects and 32 trillion observations.
-
Can giant impacts be directly detected in other star systems?
Simulations of giant impacts between 0.2-4 Earth-mass planets yield post-impact luminosities of 5e-5 to 0.1 L_sun cooling over 1-2000 days, predicting 0-14 detections in Gaia DR4 and a comparable number in LSST.
-
Impact of inhomogeneous curvature on growth rate measurements from magnitude fluctuations
Full-GR simulations find that inhomogeneous curvature produces only sub-dominant systematic offsets in growth-rate measurements from magnitude fluctuations at z ≲ 0.2 relative to current statistical errors.
-
(The) Wiggles going non-linear
N-body simulations calibrate a one-parameter damping model that predicts the non-linear matter power spectrum from wiggly primordial spectra to sub-percent accuracy when wiggle frequency is high enough.
-
Cosmological constraints from neighbor-density-weighted marked correlation functions
Neighbor-density-weighted marked correlation functions improve FoM for Ω_m–σ_8 by 1.7–2.5× over standard 2PCF using emulators from 129 w0waCDM+∑m_ν simulations.
-
Cosmological constraints from neighbor-density-weighted marked correlation functions
Neighbor-density-weighted marked correlation functions improve FoM for Ωm–σ8 by 1.7–2.5× over standard 2PCF using Gaussian-process emulators on 129 w0waCDM+∑mν simulations.
-
Comparative analysis of missing data imputation methods for CSST survey: Impact on photometric redshift estimation performance
KNN imputation gives highest photo-z accuracy under ideal random missingness with complete training data, while SAITS is more robust for incomplete training sets and realistic mixed missingness patterns in CSST data.
-
On the origin of the environmental step: A BayeSN view of the ZTF SN Ia DR2
BayeSN analysis of ZTF Type Ia supernovae confirms a ~0.1 mag intrinsic environmental step in standardized brightness that is not explained by differences in dust extinction properties.
-
Pre-localization of Massive Black Hole Binaries in the Millihertz Band
A neural spline flow pipeline performs amortized inference on millihertz MBHB signals, delivering ~20 deg² pre-merger sky localizations in ~1 minute while matching PTMCMC sky modes and parameter uncertainties.
-
Calibration-Induced Systematics in SALT3 Training and Their Impact on Dark Energy Constraints from Stage IV Supernova Surveys
Calibration uncertainties during supernova light-curve fitting cause roughly 50% degradation in dark energy figure of merit for Stage IV surveys, dominating over 13% degradation from model training errors and showing ...
-
Testing $\Lambda$CDM versus dynamical dark energy in one year: A DESI spectroscopic follow-up program for Rubin supernovae
A coordinated Rubin-DESI supernova survey could distinguish dynamical dark energy from Lambda CDM at over 5 sigma in one year using 2300 spectroscopically confirmed SNe Ia at low redshift.
-
Euclid. Populating a dark universe with galaxies using SciPIC
SciPICal calibrates galaxy properties in halo-based mocks for Euclid, delivering improved clustering predictions and a deep catalogue validated to 15 percent against observations.
-
LightCurveLynx: Forward Modeling of Time-Domain Surveys with Application to ZTF SN Ia DR2
LightCurveLynx is a flexible forward-modeling tool that produces supernova light-curve simulations matching ZTF observations with low KL divergence and consistent completeness limits.
-
Exploring Beyond {\Lambda}CDM with the Weak Lensing Power Spectrum and Bispectrum
Fisher forecasts show the weak lensing bispectrum reduces errors on CPL w0 and IDE coupling parameters but leaves f(R) scalaron constraints essentially unchanged after full marginalization over nuisance parameters.
-
IRMaGiC: Extending Luminous Red Galaxy Selection into the Infrared with Joint Rubin Observatory's Large Survey of Space Time and Roman's High Latitude Imaging Survey
IRMaGiC extends redMaGiC to z=1-2 using joint LSST optical and Roman infrared data, reducing photo-z scatter and bias for LRGs.
-
Probing Dark Energy Microphysics with kSZ Tomography
Fisher-matrix forecasts for LSST- and CMB-S4-like surveys show kSZ tomography tightens constraints on dark energy parameters w0 and wa by 15% and 32% while assessing detectability of perturbations for different sound speeds.
-
Synergy between CSST and third-generation gravitational-wave detectors: Inferring cosmological parameters using cross-correlation of dark sirens and galaxies
Forecasts that cross-correlating 3G GW dark sirens with CSST photometric galaxies yields 1.04% precision on H0 and 2.04% on Omega_m while also constraining GW clustering bias.
-
Edges In Coadded Images
Edge discontinuities in coadds cause significant shear biases only in extreme cases such as two-input-image stacks or 25% PSF size jumps, and these cases can be flagged and removed with a simple PSF variation statistic.
-
Kinetic Sunyaev Zel'dovich velocity reconstruction from Planck and unWISE
Quadratic estimator reconstructs kSZ remote dipole from Planck and unWISE data with S/N of order unity, constrains multiplicative optical depth bias b_v < 1.04 at 68% confidence after foreground cleaning.
-
The Limits of Photometric Dynamics: Benchmarking Cluster Relaxation Diagnostics
Photometric redshift uncertainties bias Anderson-Darling and Gaussian-mixture tests toward relaxed cluster classifications, with Gaussian errors producing ~95% relaxed recovery versus ~5% for unrelaxed clusters.
-
Evaluating the Sensitivity of the Age Inferences of Red Giant Stars to Machine Learning Methodology
Ages inferred for red giant stars via machine learning are generally insensitive to hyperparameters and architecture but somewhat sensitive to training set choice, especially for the oldest, coolest, and lowest-metall...
-
The SPHEREx View of Galaxy Clusters: A Simulation-based Validation of the Forced Photometry Pipeline for Extended Sources
Simulations show SPHEREx photometry is generally unbiased but source blending drives outliers; with brightness selection, photometric redshifts reach σ_NMAD ≈ 0.003-0.01 and cluster redshifts are recovered to |Δz|/(1+...
-
Synergy between CSST and future gravitational-wave detectors: Probing primordial black holes by cross-correlating dark sirens with galaxies
Cross-correlating CSST galaxies with mock GW catalogs from ET2CE and BDET2CE networks can detect PBH merger fractions above ~40% and ~20% respectively via clustering bias differences.
-
A local Universe catalogue of structures and voids dynamically identified using Cosmic-Flows4++ZOA peculiar velocities
A catalogue of 37 voids (radii 13-38 h^{-1} Mpc) and 42 knots (volumes 10^4 to 3.3x10^5 h^{-3} Mpc^3) is presented using V-web on CF4++ZOA peculiar velocities within z=0.1.
-
Galaxy formation in modified gravity -- II. galaxy halo connection and assembly bias
Simulations in f(R) gravity show that environment density in the HOD model reduces assembly bias effects to 2-3% at z≲0.5 in both ΛCDM and modified gravity.
-
Learning the Universe with the 2nd Generation of CAMELS: Varying 35 parameters of the IllustrisTNG model in (50Mpc/h)^3 boxes
New CAMELS simulations in larger (50 Mpc/h)^3 boxes with 35 varied parameters produce tighter neural-network constraints on model parameters than prior smaller-volume runs, with public data release.
-
Full Nonlinear Velocity Reconstruction With Transformer and Ensemble Tree Machine Learning
Transformer and GBDT models trained on AbacusSummit mocks for DESI LRGs/ELGs recover nonlinear velocity power spectra and cross-correlations better than linear theory across a wider range of scales, with applications ...
-
Hostless extragalactic transients in Fink: Results from the ELEPHANT pipeline
ELEPHANT flags hostless transients from ZTF alerts with 0.84 accuracy, confirming 67 genuine cases mostly as Type Ia supernovae from 877 candidates between 2023 and 2025.
-
Finding Strongly Lensed Supernovae from Blended Light Curves
A model-independent method fits blended supernova light curves as superpositions of two time-delayed components and finds only one candidate above a 12-day delay threshold in 445 ZTF Type Ia supernovae, for a 0.22% fa...
-
Predicting Redshift in Seyfert Galaxies Using Machine Learning
Random Forest regression on combined optical plus mid-infrared colors yields NMAD of 0.0188, R-squared of 0.9561, and 0.294 percent outliers for photometric redshifts in 23,797 Seyfert II galaxies selected from SDSS and WISE.
-
Gamma-Ray Bursts as an Independent High-Redshift Probe of Dark Energy
Forecasts show that ~66 optical GRBs can achieve σ_w ≈ 0.47 in wCDM using Dainotti relations, matching Planck precision and enabling independent high-redshift tests of dark energy.
discussion (0)
Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.