LSST to Discover Thousands of New Hildas

This paper presents a simulation of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) discovery of Hildas, asteroids occupying the 3:2 mean-motion resonance of Jupiter. Using the Sorcha survey simulator, the study predicts that LSST will discover approximately 33,400 Hildas over its ten-year survey, representing a five-fold increase over the currently known population. The simulation incorporates a synthetic Hilda population model with distributions of orbital properties, sizes, collisional families, and colors. Three distinct populations of sinusoidal light-curves were applied to this model, including a Gaussian kernel density estimate (KDE) fit to rotational periods and amplitudes from the Lightcurve Database (LCDB).

The study found that 45.96% of Hildas in the LCDB-based population were confidently recovered using a multiband Lomb-Scargle Periodogram via Astropy. This recovery rate is higher than typical in observational searches, suggesting potential differences between the light-curve population model and the intrinsic population. The analysis revealed strong biases in light-curve amplitude, with recovery efficiency decreasing significantly below 0.1 magnitudes. While biases from rotational period were comparatively weak, cadence-related features, such as LSST's 36-minute revisit cadence, were observed. The authors acknowledge that the recovery efficiency is likely overestimated due to the assumption of constant sinusoidal light-curves, which correspond to optimal pole orientations. These results represent the first test of light-curve recovery from simulated LSST observations, providing valuable insights for future asteroid surveys.

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