No Dearth of Earths : Unveiling the Earth+Super-Earth Occurrence Rate in Mid-to-Late M Dwarfs with TESS

M dwarfs not only dominate the stellar population in the solar neighborhood but also host the majority of terrestrial planets in our galaxy. However, there is a gap in our understanding of the variation of planet occurrence rate with stellar mass, especially for stars with M<0.3 M⨀. Some studies indicate that the terrestrial planet occurrence rate peaks at the lowest-mass stars, however, pebble accretion models predict the peak yield for stars with M~0.5 M⨀ with a decreasing occurrence for lower-mass hosts. Here we determine the Earth+super-Earth occurrence rate for a magnitude-limited sample of mid-to-late-M dwarfs observed with TESS. We have developed the Exoplanet Survey & Characterization Program for Earth-like Rocky planets (EXOSCAPER) pipeline for detecting multi-planetary systems using TESS lightcurves. We present 17 new candidates & validate 35 known planetary candidates within the Earth+super-Earth range. We also investigate the precision and planet detection efficiency as a function of lightcurve cadence,using 20, 120, and 200-sec data from TESS. We compute the cumulative occurrence rate = 0.71-0.27+0.42 planets/star for a radius range of 0.2-2 R⊕ and periods between 0.1-7 days.