Oral Presentation Astronomical Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting including HWWS 2013

Supernova discoveries at z > 2 and their host galaxies (#42)

Jeff Cooke 1 , Mark Sullivan 2 , Avishay Gal-Yam 3 , Raymond Calrberg 4 , Emma Ryan-Weber 1 , Richard Ellis 5 , Chuck Horst 6 , Yuuki Omori 7 , Gonzalo Diaz 1
  1. Swinburne University, Hawthorn, VIC, Australia
  2. Oxford University, Oxford, UK
  3. Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, Israel
  4. University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
  5. Caltech, Pasadena, CA, USA
  6. San Diego State University, San Diego, USA
  7. McGill University, Montreal, Canada

I will discuss our image-stacking, galaxy monitoring method that has successfully detected 15 supernovae at z > 2 in the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey Deep fields.  I will present supernova light curves and late-time Keck spectra which include two recently discovered super-luminous, pair-instability supernova candidates at z = 2.05 and z = 3.90.  Our supernova program monitors z > 2 Lyman break galaxies.  I will compare the rest-frame ultraviolet photometric and spectroscopic properties of the supernova host galaxies with respect to the complete (~100,000) galaxy sample and discuss observed trends and implications.  Because Population III stars are believed to exist down to z ~ 2, and clouds of pristine gas capable of forming Population III stars have been discovered at z ~ 3, our technique to detect z > 2 supernovae offers the first viable means to provide observational examples of the deaths of the first stars.  Upcoming DES DECam, Hyper-SuprimeCam, and LSST surveys are poised to detect >50,000 supernovae at z ~ 2 - 6 that will fully characterize high redshift events and enable tight constraints on their progenitors and the form of the high-redshift IMF.