Transiting Planets with LSST. III. Detection Rate per Year of Operation

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will generate light curves for approximately 1 billion stars. Our previous work has demonstrated that, by the end of the LSST 10-year mission, large numbers of transiting exoplanetary systems could be recovered using the LSST "deep-drilling" cadence. Here, we extend our previous work to examine how the recoverability of transiting planets over a range of orbital periods and radii evolves per year of LSST operation. As specific example systems, we consider hot Jupiters orbiting solar-type stars and hot Neptunes orbiting K-dwarfs at distances from Earth of several kpc, as well as super-Earths orbiting nearby low-mass M-dwarfs. The detection of transiting planets increases steadily with the accumulation of data over time, generally becoming large (10%) after 4–6 years of operation. However, we also find that short-period (2 days) hot Jupiters orbiting G-dwarfs and hot Neptunes orbiting K-dwarfs can already be discovered within the first 1–2 years of LSST operation.