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Published May 1, 2014 | Published + Submitted
Journal Article Open

Three Gravitationally Lensed Supernovae behind CLASH Galaxy Clusters

Abstract

We report observations of three gravitationally lensed supernovae (SNe) in the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH) Multi-Cycle Treasury program. These objects, SN CLO12Car (z = 1.28), SN CLN12Did (z = 0.85), and SN CLA11Tib (z = 1.14), are located behind three different clusters, MACSJ1720.2+3536 (z = 0.391), RXJ1532.9+3021 (z = 0.345), and A383 (z = 0.187), respectively. Each SN was detected in Hubble Space Telescope optical and infrared images. Based on photometric classification, we find that SNe CLO12Car and CLN12Did are likely to be Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), while the classification of SN CLA11Tib is inconclusive. Using multi-color light-curve fits to determine a standardized SN Ia luminosity distance, we infer that SN CLO12Car was ~1.0 ± 0.2 mag brighter than field SNe Ia at a similar redshift and ascribe this to gravitational lens magnification. Similarly, SN CLN12Did is ~0.2 ± 0.2 mag brighter than field SNe Ia. We derive independent estimates of the predicted magnification from CLASH strong+weak-lensing maps of the clusters (in magnitude units, 2.5 log_(10)μ): 0.83 ± 0.16 mag for SN CLO12Car, 0.28 ± 0.08 mag for SN CLN12Did, and 0.43 ± 0.11 mag for SN CLA11Tib. The two SNe Ia provide a new test of the cluster lens model predictions: we find that the magnifications based on the SN Ia brightness and those predicted by the lens maps are consistent. Our results herald the promise of future observations of samples of cluster-lensed SNe Ia (from the ground or space) to help illuminate the dark-matter distribution in clusters of galaxies, through the direct determination of absolute magnifications.

Additional Information

© 2014 American Astronomical Society. Received 2013 December 3; accepted 2014 March 7; published 2014 April 9. We would like to thank Rick Kessler for invaluable assistance with SNANA. We are grateful to Jakob Nordin for helpful discussions, and Saul Perlmutter and the Supernova Cosmology Project for communication and coordination. This research at Rutgers University was supported through NASA/HST grant GO-12099.14 and National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award AST-0847157 to S.W.J. Support for S.R. and A.Z. was provided by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grants HST-HF-51312.01 and HST-HF-51334.01, respectively, awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS 5-26555. L.I. thanks Basal/CATA CONICYT funding for support. This research was carried out in part at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. Support for HST programs GO-12065 and GO-12099 was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. A.V.F. is also grateful for the support of NSF grant AST-1211916, the TABASGO Foundation, and the Christopher R. Redlich Fund. Support for M.N. was provided in part by grant PRIN-INAF 2010. Some of the observations reported in this paper were obtained with the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), through Rutgers University program 2011-3-RU-001 (PI: C. McCully). This work was supported by a NASA Keck PI Data Award, administered by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute. Data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory from telescope time allocated to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through the agency's scientific partnership with the California Institute of Technology and the University of California. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. The authors recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Mauna Kea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community, and we are most privileged to have the opportunity to explore the universe from this mountain. This work is based in part on data collected at the Subaru telescope and obtained from the Subaru–Mitaka–Okayama–Kiso Archive, which is operated by the Astronomy Data Center, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. Additional data were obtained at the Gemini Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the NSF on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), the National Research Council (Canada), CONICYT (Chile), the Australian Research Council (Australia), Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação (Brazil), and Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovaciόn Productiva (Argentina). The data were taken as part of programs GN-2012A-Q-32 and GN-2013A-Q-25.

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Published - 0004-637X_786_1_9.pdf

Submitted - 1312.0943v2.pdf

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August 22, 2023
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October 26, 2023