Search for Supernova Progenitor Stars with ZTF and LSST
Creators
-
1.
Weizmann Institute of Science
-
2.
Stockholm University
-
3.
Northwestern University
- 4. Laboratoire de Physique de Clermont, IN2P3/CNRS, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, France
-
5.
California Institute of Technology
Abstract
The direct detection of core-collapse supernova (SN) progenitor stars is a powerful way of probing the last stages of stellar evolution. However, detections in archival Hubble Space Telescope images are limited to about one detection per year. Here, we explore whether we can increase the detection rate by using data from ground-based wide-field surveys. Due to crowding and atmospheric blurring, progenitor stars can typically not be identified in preexplosion images alone. Instead, we combine many pre-SN and late-time images to search for the disappearance of the progenitor star. As a proof of concept, we implement our search of ZTF data. For a few hundred images, we achieve limiting magnitudes of ∼23 mag in the g and r bands. However, no progenitor stars or long-lived outbursts are detected for 29 SNe within z ≤ 0.01, and the ZTF limits are typically several magnitudes less constraining than detected progenitors in the literature. Next, we estimate progenitor detection rates for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) with the Vera C. Rubin telescope by simulating a population of nearby SNe. The background from bright host galaxies reduces the nominal LSST sensitivity by, on average, 0.4 mag. Over the 10 yr survey, we expect the detection of ∼50 red supergiant progenitors and several yellow and blue supergiants. The progenitors of Type Ib and Ic SNe will be detectable if they are brighter than −4.7 or −4.0 mag in the LSST i band, respectively. In addition, we expect the detection of hundreds of pre-SN outbursts depending on their brightness and duration.
Copyright and License
© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Acknowledgement
We thank the anonymous referee, Schuyler Van Dyk, and Doron Kushnir for their comments on the manuscript. In addition, we are grateful to Morgan Fraser, Emma Beasor, Samantha Wu, Azalee Bostroem, Eva Laplace, and Dietrich Baade for helpful discussions. We would like to thank the organizers of the MIAPbP workshop on interacting supernovae.
N.L.S. is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) via the Walter Benjamin program—461903330. This research was supported by the Munich Institute for Astro-, Particle and BioPhysics (MIAPbP), which is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under Germany's Excellence Strategy—EXC-2094—390783311.
E.O.O. is grateful for the support of grants from the Benozio center, Willner Family Leadership Institute, Ilan Gluzman (Secaucus NJ), Madame Olga Klein—Astrachan, Minerva foundation, Israel Science Foundation, BSF, Israel Ministry of Science, Yeda-Sela, and Weizmann-MIT.
This work is based on observations obtained with the Samuel Oschin Telescope 48 inch and the 60 inch Telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) project. ZTF is supported by the National Science Foundation under grants No. AST-1440341 and AST-2034437, and a collaboration including current partners Caltech, IPAC, the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Oskar Klein Center at Stockholm University, the University of Maryland, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron and Humboldt University, the TANGO Consortium of Taiwan, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Trinity College Dublin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, IN2P3, University of Warwick, Ruhr University Bochum, Northwestern University and former partners the University of Washington, Los Alamos National Laboratories, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. Operations are conducted by COO, IPAC, and UW.
This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and operated by the California Institute of Technology.
This research has used the Spanish Virtual Observatory (https://svo.cab.inta-csic.es) project funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ through grant PID2020-112949GB-I00.
Files
Strotjohann_2024_ApJ_960_72.pdf
Files
(3.3 MB)
| Name | Size | Download all |
|---|---|---|
|
md5:7c3ff96e160dc52fc7cbe702e926e6fb
|
3.3 MB | Preview Download |
Additional details
Funding
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- 461903330
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- 390783311
Dates
- Accepted
-
2023-10-22Accepted
- Available
-
2023-12-27Published online