Selecting superluminous supernovae in faint galaxies from the first year of the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey - UTU Research Portal

A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal

Selecting superluminous supernovae in faint galaxies from the first year of the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey

Authors: McCrum M, Smartt SJ, Rest A, Smith K, Kotak R, Rodney SA, Young DR, Chornock R, Berger E, Foley RJ, Fraser M, Wright D, Scolnic D, Tonry JL, Urata Y, Huang K, Pastorello A, Botticella MT, Valenti S, Mattila S, Kankare E, Farrow DJ, Huber ME, Stubbs CW, Kirshner RP, Bresolin F, Burgett WS, Chambers KC, Draper PW, Flewelling H, Jedicke R, Kaiser N, Magnier EA, Metcalfe N, Morgan JS, Price PA, Sweeney W, Wainscoat RJ, Waters C, Wainscoat RJ, Waters C

Publisher: OXFORD UNIV PRESS

Publication year: 2015

Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Journal name in source: MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY

Journal acronym: MON NOT R ASTRON SOC

Volume: 448

Issue: 2

First page : 1206

Last page: 1231

Number of pages: 26

ISSN: 0035-8711

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv034

Abstract

The Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) survey has obtained imaging in five bands (grizy(P1)) over 10 Medium Deep Survey (MDS) fields covering a total of 70 square degrees. This paper describes the search for apparently hostless supernovae (SNe) within the first year of PS1 MDS data with an aim of discovering superluminous supernovae (SLSNe). A total of 249 hostless transients were discovered down to a limiting magnitude of M-AB similar to 23.5, of which 76 were classified as Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). There were 57 SNe with complete light curves that are likely core-collapse SNe (CCSNe) or type Ic SLSNe and 12 of these have had spectra taken. Of these 12 hostless, non-Type Ia SNe, 7 were SLSNe of type Ic at redshifts between 0.5 and 1.4. This illustrates that the discovery rate of type Ic SLSNe can be maximized by concentrating on hostless transients and removing normal SNe Ia. We present data for two possible SLSNe; PS1-10pm (z = 1.206) and PS1-10ahf (z = 1.1), and estimate the rate of type Ic SLSNe to be between 3(-2)(+3) x 10(-5) and 8(-1)(+2) x 10(-5) that of the CCSN rate within 0.3 <= z <= 1.4 by applying a Monte Carlo technique. The rate of slowly evolving, type Ic SLSNe (such as SN2007bi) is estimated as a factor of 10 lower than this range.