Observing the earliest moments of supernovae using strong gravitational lenses

Abstract

We determine the viability of exploiting lensing time delays to observe strongly gravitationally lensed supernovae (gLSNe) from first light. Assuming a plausible discovery strategy, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) and the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) will discover ∼110 and ∼1 systems per year before the supernova (SN) explosion in the final image, respectively. Systems will be identified 11.7^(+29.8)_(−9.3) d before the final explosion. We then explore the possibility of performing early-time observations for Type IIP and Type Ia SNe in LSST-discovered systems. Using a simulated Type IIP explosion, we predict that the shock breakout in one trailing image per year will peak at ≲24.1 mag (≲23.3) in the B-band (F218W), however evolving over a time-scale of ∼30 min. Using an analytic model of Type Ia companion interaction, we find that in the B-band we should observe at least one shock cooling emission event per year that peaks at ≲26.3 mag (≲29.6) assuming all Type Ia gLSNe have a 1 M_⊙ red giant (main sequence) companion. We perform Bayesian analysis to investigate how well deep observations with 1 h exposures on the European Extremely Large Telescope would discriminate between Type Ia progenitor populations. We find that if all Type Ia SNe evolved from the double-degenerate channel, then observations of the lack of early blue flux in 10 (50) trailing images would rule out more than 27 per cent (19 per cent) of the population having 1 M_⊙ main sequence companions at 95 per cent confidence.

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