Search arXivSearch

arXiv · 1312.6330

Detecting Ancient Supernovae at z ~ 5 - 12 with CLASH

Abstract

Supernovae are important probes of the properties of stars at high redshifts because they can be detected at early epochs and their masses can be inferred from their light curves. Finding the first cosmic explosions in the universe will only be possible with the James Webb Space Telescope, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope and the next generation of extremely large telescopes. But strong gravitational lensing by massive clusters, like those in the Cluster Lensing and Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH), could reveal such events now by magnifying their flux by factors of 10 or more. We find that CLASH will likely discover at least 2 - 3 core-collapse supernovae at 5 < z < 12 and perhaps as many as ten. Future surveys of cluster lenses similar in scope to CLASH by the James Webb Space Telescope might find hundreds of these events out to z ~ 15 - 17. Besides revealing the masses of early stars, these ancient supernovae will also constrain cosmic star formation rates in the era of first galaxy formation.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Daniel J. Whalen, Joseph Smidt, Claes-Erik Rydberg, Jarrett L. Johnson, Daniel E. Holz, Massimo Stiavelli. 2017-01-17. Detecting Ancient Supernovae at z ~ 5 - 12 with CLASH. https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.6330

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

Large primordial non-Gaussianity from transient turns in Higgs-$R^2$ inflation

We investigate the generation of primordial non-Gaussianities in multifield Higgs--$R^2$ inflation, focusing on the effects of transient turning trajectories in the hyperbolic field space manifold. We compute the full bispectrum without relying on slow-roll or local approximations and follow the complete superhorizon evolution of curvature and isocurvature perturbations. We show that transient turns efficiently transfer isocurvature fluctuations into the adiabatic sector, generating sizeable local non-Gaussianities. For a benchmark Higgs nonminimal coupling $ξ_h = 0.1$ and quartic coupling $λ= 10^{-10}$, we obtain $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm loc}\simeq -17.7$. As the Higgs nonminimal coupling increases, the turning rate is progressively suppressed and the model approaches the effective single-field attractor, recovering the Maldacena consistency relation $f_{\rm NL}\rightarrow 0.0159$. Comparing our predictions with current CMB constraints, we find that primordial non-Gaussianity provides a sensitive probe of the Higgs nonminimal coupling and can significantly restrict the viable parameter space of the model.

astro-ph.CO

From quantum fluctuations to galaxy power spectrum multipoles

These notes trace large-scale structure from primordial curvature perturbations generated by inflationary quantum fluctuations to galaxy power-spectrum multipoles. Three core lectures develop the linear matter power spectrum, spherical and anisotropic collapse, galaxy bias, redshift-space distortions, the Kaiser model, and multipole estimators with Gaussian covariance. The extension develops nonlinear bias and the one-loop effective field theory model used in full-shape analyses. Derivations are explicit; appendices collect longer calculations and solutions. The core lectures assume undergraduate-level cosmology; the extension assumes familiarity with perturbation theory.

astro-ph.CO

A universal connection between lens density profiles and low-frequency wave optics in gravitational-wave lensing

We investigate the low-frequency behavior of the amplification factor in gravitational lensing and explore how it encodes information about the density profile of the lensing object. We derive the low-frequency expansion of the amplification factor under the Born approximation for a broad class of projected density profiles. For spherically symmetric profiles that decay faster than any power law at large distances, we derive a systematic expansion of the amplification factor in powers of frequency, with the logarithmic dependence appearing only in the leading term, and show that each expansion coefficient is determined by a finite set of moments of the density profile. We then extend the analysis to profiles with power-law tails and demonstrate that such profiles induce additional non-analytic frequency dependences, including fractional powers and logarithmic terms, which directly reflect the asymptotic behavior of the density distribution. Furthermore, we investigate the effects of non-sphericity and show that contributions from the quadrupole moment appear only as higher-order corrections relative to the spherically symmetric component in the low-frequency regime. Finally, we investigate the validity of the Born approximation in the low-frequency expansion. We derive a criterion for the maximum order of the low-frequency expansion up to which the Born approximation remains dominant over the post-Born corrections.

astro-ph.CO