Probing the stellar initial mass function with high-z supernovae

De Souza, Rafael da Silva and Ishida, E. E. O. and Whalen, D. J. and Johnson, J. L. and Ferrara, A. (2014) Probing the stellar initial mass function with high-z supernovae. MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, 442 (2). pp. 1640-1655. ISSN 0035-8711

Preview

Text 1401.2995.pdf Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (4MB) | Preview

Abstract

The first supernovae will soon be visible at the edge of the observable universe, revealing the birthplaces of Population III stars. With upcoming near-infrared missions, a broad anal- ysis of the detectability of high-z supernovae is paramount. We combine cosmological and radiation transport simulations, instrument specifications, and survey strategies to create syn- thetic observations of primeval core-collapse, Type IIn and pair-instability supernovae with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). We show that a dedicated observational campaign with the JWST can detect up to ∼ 15 pair-instability explosions, ∼ 300 core-collapse super- novae, but less than one Type IIn explosion per year, depending on the Population III star formation history. Our synthetic survey also shows that ≈ 1 − 2 × 102 supernovae detec- tions, depending on the accuracy of the classification, are sufficient to discriminate between a Salpeter and flat mass distribution for high redshift stars with a confidence level greater than 99.5 per cent. We discuss how the purity of the sample affects our results and how supervised learning methods may help to discriminate between CC and PI SNe.

Actions (login required)

Edit Item