The undetectable fraction of core-collapse supernovae in luminous infrared galaxies;
: Mäntynen, I.; Kankare, E.; Mattila, S.; Efstathiou, A.; Ryder, S. D.; Kool, E.; Matilainen, K.; Reynolds, T. M.; Vassallo, C.; Väisänen, P.
Publisher: EDP Sciences
: 2026
Astronomy and Astrophysics
: A183
: 709
: 0004-6361
: 1432-0746
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202558644
: https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202558644
: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/524864527
Context. Core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) in luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) can have extreme line-of-sight host galaxy dust extinctions, which leads to a large fraction of the events remaining undetected by optical and infrared surveys. This population of undetected CCSNe is important to constrain in order to determine the cosmic CCSN rates, which can be used to estimate the cosmic star formation history independently from methods based on galaxy luminosities.
Aims. Our aim is to confirm and refine our estimates for the undetectable fraction of CCSNe in LIRGs in the local Universe. Our study is based on the near-infrared K-band multi-epoch SUNBIRD survey monitoring dataset of a sample of nine LIRGs using the Gemini-South telescope with the multi-conjugate GSAOI/GeMS laser guide star adaptive optics system.
Methods. We determined the limiting magnitudes for CCSN detection for each epoch in our dataset with artificial supernova injection and image subtraction methods. Subsequently, we used a Monte Carlo method to determine the combined effects of limiting magnitudes, survey cadence, CCSN subtype distribution, and their light curve evolution diversity. The intrinsic CCSN rates of the sample galaxies were estimated based on detailed modelling of their spectral energy distribution. Finally, we combined the resulting CCSN detection probabilities with the intrinsic CCSN rates for the dataset, and compared that against the real CCSN detections over the survey period.
Results. Based on our GSAOI/GeMS dataset, assuming optical or near-infrared example surveys with capabilities to detect CCSNe in local LIRGs with host extinctions of AV = 3 or 16 mag, respectively, the resulting total undetectable fractions are 86.0+4.7−5.9% and 53.6+15.6−19.6%. When folding in the results from our previous near-infrared adaptive optics assisted LIRG monitoring dataset, the corresponding total undetectable fractions are 88.3+2.6−3.2% and 61.4+8.5−10.6%, respectively.
dust, galaxies: star formation
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We thank the anonymous referee for useful comments. IM, EK, and KM acknowledge financial support from the Emil Aaltonen foundation. TMR is part of the Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN), which is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation under grant DNRF140. TMR and SM acknowledge support from the Research Council of Finland project 350458. Based on observations obtained at the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF NOIRLab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. National Science Foundation on behalf of the Gemini Observatory partnership: the U.S. National Science Foundation (United States), National Research Council (Canada), Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Argentina), Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações (Brazil), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). Based on observations made with the Nordic Optical Telescope, owned in collaboration by the University of Turku and Aarhus University, and operated jointly by Aarhus University, the University of Turku and the University of Oslo, representing Denmark, Finland and Norway, the University of Iceland and Stockholm University at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain, of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. Observations from the NOT were obtained through the NUTS2 collaboration which is supported in part by the Instrument Centre for Danish Astrophysics (IDA), and the Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO (FINCA) via Academy of Finland grant nr 306531. This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and operated by the California Institute of Technology.
