TiDES: The 4MOST Time Domain Extragalactic Survey

The Time Domain Extragalactic Survey (TiDES) conducted on the 4 m Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope will perform spectroscopic follow-up of extragalactic transients discovered in the era of the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory. TiDES will conduct a 5 yr survey, covering , and use around 250,000 fibre hours to address three main science goals: (i) spectroscopic observations of >30,000 live transients, (ii) comprehensive follow-up of >200,000 host galaxies to obtain redshift measurements, and (iii) repeat spectroscopic observations of active galactic nuclei to enable reverberation mapping studies. The live spectra from TiDES will be used to reveal the diversity and astrophysics of both normal and exotic supernovae across the luminosity-timescale plane. The extensive host-galaxy redshift campaign will allow exploitation of the larger sample of supernovae and improve photometric classification, providing the largest-ever sample of SNe Ia, capable of a sub-2% measurement of the equation-of-state of dark energy. Finally, the TiDES reverberation mapping experiment of 700–1000 AGN will complement the SN Ia sample and extend the Hubble diagram to z ∼ 2.5.