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Title: DES13S2cmm: The first superluminous supernova from the Dark Energy Survey

Journal Article · · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv174· OSTI ID:1201362
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  1. Univ. of Portsmouth, Portsmouth (United Kingdom)
  2. Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
  3. Univ. of Southampton, Southampton (United Kingdom)
  4. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  5. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
  6. Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)
  7. National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Urbana, IL (United States); Univ. of Illinois Urban-Champaign, Urbana, IL (United States)
  8. Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
  9. Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (United States)
  10. Univ. of Illinois Urban-Champaign, Urbana, IL (United States);
  11. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  12. Univ. of Chicago, Chicago, IL (United States)
  13. Australian Astronomical Observatory (Australia)
  14. National Optical Astronomy Observatory, La Serena (Chile)
  15. Univ. College London, London (United Kingdom)
  16. National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Urbana, IL (United States); Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD (United States)
  17. Carnegie Observatories, Pasadena, CA (United States)
  18. Observatorio Nacional, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil); Lab. Interinstitucional de e-Astronomia, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
  19. Ludwig Maximilian Univ., Munich (Germany); Excellence Cluster Universe, Garching (Germany)
  20. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA (United States)
  21. Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
  22. Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  23. Univ. Observatory Munich, Munich (Germany); Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching (Germany)
  24. The Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States)
  25. ICRA, Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
  26. Univ. Autonoma de Barcelona, Barcelona (Spain); Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avancats, Barcelona (Spain)
  27. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  28. Univ. of Sussex, Brighton (United Kingdom)
  29. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  30. Centro de Investigaciones Energeticas, Medioambientales y Tecnologicas(CIEMAT), Madrid (Spain)
  31. Instituto de Fisica, Porto Alegre (Brazil); Lab. Interinstitucional de e-Astronomia, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
  32. National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Urbana, IL (United States)
  33. Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States)
  34. Univ. of Manchester, Manchester (United Kingdom)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Here, we present DES13S2cmm, the first spectroscopically-confirmed superluminous supernova (SLSN) from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). We briefly discuss the data and search algorithm used to find this event in the first year of DES operations, and outline the spectroscopic data obtained from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Very Large Telescope to confirm its redshift (z = 0.663 ± 0.001 based on the host-galaxy emission lines) and likely spectral type (Type I). When using this redshift, we find M$$peak\atop{U}$$=-21.05$$+0.10\atop{-0.09}$$ for the peak, rest-frame U-band absolute magnitude, and find DES13S2cmm to be located in a faint, low-metallicity (sub-solar), low stellar-mass host galaxy (log (M/M⊙) = 9.3 ± 0.3), consistent with what is seen for other SLSNe-I. We compare the bolometric light curve of DES13S2cmm to 14 similarly well-observed SLSNe-I in the literature and find that it possesses one of the slowest declining tails (beyond +30 d rest-frame past peak), and is the faintest at peak. Moreover, we find the bolometric light curves of all SLSNe-I studied herein possess a dispersion of only 0.2–0.3 mag between +25 and +30 d after peak (rest frame) depending on redshift range studied; this could be important for ‘standardizing’ such supernovae, as is done with the more common Type Ia. We also fit the bolometric light curve of DES13S2cmm with two competing models for SLSNe-I – the radioactive decay of 56Ni, and a magnetar – and find that while the magnetar is formally a better fit, neither model provides a compelling match to the data. Though we are unable to conclusively differentiate between these two physical models for this particular SLSN-I, further DES observations of more SLSNe-I should break this degeneracy, especially if the light curves of SLSNe-I can be observed beyond 100 d in the rest frame of the supernova.

Research Organization:
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
Contributing Organization:
DES Collaboration
Grant/Contract Number:
SC00112704; AC02-07CH11359; AC02-76SF00515
OSTI ID:
1201362
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1221239; OSTI ID: 1336373
Report Number(s):
BNL-108182-2015-JA; FERMILAB-PUB-15-020-AE-PPD; SLAC-PUB-16765; KA2301020
Journal Information:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 449, Issue 2; Conference: Naples (Italy), 3-5 Jun 2014; ISSN 0035-8711
Publisher:
Royal Astronomical SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 49 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (30)

The magnetar model for Type I superluminous supernovae I: Bayesian analysis of the full multicolour light curve sample with MOSFiT text January 2017
The dark Energy Camera journal October 2015
Analyzing the Largest Spectroscopic Data Set of Hydrogen-poor Super-luminous Supernovae journal August 2017
Radiative shock waves and their role in solving puzzles of Superluminous Supernovae preprint January 2016
Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (Mesa): Binaries, Pulsations, and Explosions journal September 2015
Galaxies in X-ray selected clusters and groups in Dark Energy Survey data – II. Hierarchical Bayesian modelling of the red-sequence galaxy luminosity function journal June 2019
Developing a unified pipeline for large-scale structure data analysis with angular power spectra -- I. The importance of redshift-space distortions for galaxy number counts text January 2019
Host Galaxy Identification for Supernova Surveys journal November 2016
Superluminous Supernovae from the Dark Energy Survey text January 2018
Systematic Investigation of the Fallback Accretion-powered Model for Hydrogen-poor Superluminous Supernovae journal November 2018
A statistical approach to identify superluminous supernovae and probe their diversity text January 2017
Hydrogen-Poor Superluminous Supernovae from the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey text January 2017
On the nature of hydrogen-rich superluminous supernovae journal January 2018
The Magnetar Model for Type I Superluminous Supernovae. I. Bayesian Analysis of the Full Multicolor Light-curve Sample with MOSFiT journal November 2017
Superluminous Supernovae in LSST: Rates, Detection Metrics, and Light-curve Modeling journal December 2018
The Dark Energy Survey: more than dark energy – an overview journal March 2016
The Dark Energy Survey: more than dark energy - an overview text January 2016
Galaxies in X-ray Selected Clusters and Groups in Dark Energy Survey Data II: Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling of the Red-Sequence Galaxy Luminosity Function preprint January 2017
Cosmic evolution and metal aversion in superluminous supernova host galaxies journal September 2017
Cosmic evolution and metal aversion in superluminous supernova host galaxies text January 2018
Developing a unified pipeline for large-scale structure data analysis with angular power spectra – I. The importance of redshift-space distortions for galaxy number counts journal September 2019
A Hydrogen-poor Superluminous Supernova with Enhanced Iron-group Absorption: A New Link between SLSNe and Broad-lined Type Ic SNe journal February 2019
Hydrogen-poor Superluminous Supernovae from the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey journal January 2018
Studying the Ultraviolet Spectrum of the First Spectroscopically Confirmed Supernova at Redshift Two journal February 2018
Spectrum formation in superluminous supernovae (Type I) journal March 2016
Analyzing the Largest Spectroscopic Dataset of Hydrogen-Poor Super-Luminous Supernovae text January 2016
On the nature of Hydrogen-rich Superluminous Supernovae text January 2016
The Difference Imaging Pipeline for the Transient Search in the dark Energy Survey journal November 2015
Superluminous supernovae from the Dark Energy Survey journal May 2019
A Statistical Approach to Identify Superluminous Supernovae and Probe Their Diversity journal February 2018

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