Mapping the Stellar Content of the Milky Way with LSST

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will map half of the sky in six filters down to r=27.5 (AB mag; 5-sigma), with typical precision of one percent (0.01 mag). The ten year baseline of the survey will provide about a thousand multi-epoch observations for objects brighter than r=24.5, yielding variability, proper motions and trigonometric parallax measurements for hundreds of millions of stars. The resulting photometric and astrometric catalogs will enable novel and unique investigations, detailing the formation and evolution of the Milky Way's stellar populations, as well as neighboring galaxies. We highlight some of the enabled science studies, including results from the output source catalog derived from simulated LSST images. A few examples of the stellar populations projects will be shown: sampling a census of the MLT population near the solar neighborhood; mapping the structure and stellar metallicity content of the Milky Way's disk and halo; assembling catalogs of eclipsing binaries, subdwarfs and white dwarfs, suitable for measuring fundamental stellar parameters; and measuring the Milky Way's star formation history using stellar ages determined from gyrochronology and rotation periods, as well as the white dwarf luminosity function. We also highlight the studies enabled by the "Deep Drilling" fields, patches within the LSST footprint that will be imaged at a higher cadence over the course of the survey....