Scalable and Robust Multiband Modeling of AGN Light Curves in Rubin-LSST
Abstract
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will monitor tens of millions of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) for a period of 10 years with an average cadence of 3 days in six broad photometric bands. This unprecedented dataset will enable robust characterizations of AGN UV/optical variability across a wide range of AGN physical properties. However, existing tools for modeling AGN light curves are not yet capable of fully leveraging the volume, cadence, and multiband nature of LSST data. We present EzTaoX, a scalable light curve modeling tool designed to take advantage of LSST's multiband observations to simultaneously characterize AGN UV/optical stochastic variability and measure interband time delays. EzTaoX achieves a speed increase of on CPUs over current tools with similar capabilities, while maintaining equal or better accuracy in recovering simulated variability properties. This performance gain enables continuum time-delay measurements for all AGNs discovered by LSST -- both in the Wide Fast Deep survey and the Deep Drilling Fields -- thereby opening new opportunities to probe AGN accretion-flow geometries. In addition, EzTaoX's multiband capability allows robust characterization of AGN stochastic variability down to hourly timescales, facilitating the identification of accreting low-mass AGNs -- such as those residing in dwarf galaxies -- through their distinctive variability signatures.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.21479,
title = {Scalable and Robust Multiband Modeling of AGN Light Curves in Rubin-LSST},
author = {Weixiang Yu and John J. Ruan and Colin J. Burke and Roberto J. Assef and Tonima T. Ananna and Franz E. Bauer and Demetra De Cicco and Keith Horne and Lorena Hernández-García and Dragana Ilić and Vivek Kumar Jha and Andjelka B. Kovačević and Marcin Marculewicz and Swayamtrupta Panda and Claudio Ricci and Gordon T. Richards and Rogemar A. Riffel and Donald P. Schneider and Paula Sánchez-Sáez and Sarath Satheesh Sheeba and Francesco Tombesi and Matthew J. Temple and Michael S. Vogeley and Ilsang Yoon and Fan Zou},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.21479},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in ApJ, 24 pages, 15 figures