Professor Stephen Smartt CBE FRS MRIA

Abstract:

Abstract Early-time spectroscopy of supernovae (SNe), acquired within days of explosion, yields crucial insights into their outermost ejecta layers, facilitating the study of their environments, progenitor systems, and explosion mechanisms. Recent efforts in early discovery and follow-up of SNe have shown the potential insights that can be gained from early-time spectra. Surveys such as the Time-Domain Extragalactic Survey (TiDES), conducted with the 4-meter Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST), will provide spectroscopic follow-up of transients discovered by the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). Current simulations indicate that early-time spectroscopic studies conducted with TiDES data will be limited by the current SN selection criteria. To enhance early-time SN spectroscopic studies from TiDES-like surveys, we propose a set of selection criteria focusing on young SNe (YSNe), which we define as SNe prior to −10 days before peak brightness. Utilising the Zwicky Transient Facility transient alerts, we developed criteria to select YSNe while minimising the sample’s contamination rate to 23percnt. The developed criteria were applied to LSST simulations, yielding a sample of 694 Deep Drilling Field survey SNe and 56260 Wide Fast Deep survey SNe for follow-up. We demonstrate that our criteria enables the selection of SNe at early-times, enhancing future early-time spectroscopic SN studies from TiDES-like surveys. Finally, we investigated 4MOST-like observing strategies to increase the sample of spectroscopically observed YSNe. We propose that a 4MOST-like observing strategy that follows LSST with a delay of 3 days is optimal for a TiDES-like SN survey in terms of the number of classifiable spectra obtained, while a 1 day delay is most optimal for enhancing the early-time science in conjunction with our YSN selection criteria.

Abstract:

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are among the most precise cosmological distance indicators used to study the expansion history of the Universe. The vast increase in SN Ia data due to large-scale astrophysical surveys has led to the discovery of a wide variety of SN Ia sub-classes, such as transitional and fast-declining SNe Ia. However, their distinct photometric and spectroscopic properties differentiate them from the population of normal SNe Ia such that their use as cosmological tools remains challenged. Here, we present a high-cadenced photometric and spectroscopic dataset of two SNe Ia, SNe 2020ue and 2020nlb, which were discovered in the nearby Virgo cluster of galaxies. Our study shows that SN 2020nlb is a normal SN Ia whose unusually red colour is intrinsic, arising from a lower photospheric temperature rather than interstellar reddening, providing clear evidence that colour diversity among normal SNe Ia can have a physical origin. In contrast, SN 2020ue has photometric properties, such as colour evolution and light curve decay rate, similar to those of transitional SNe. It is hence more spectroscopically aligned with normal SNe Ia. This is evident from spectroscopic indicators such as the pseudo-equivalent width of lines. Thus, such SNe Ia, which lie photometrically at the edge of the standard normal SNe Ia range, may be missed in cosmological SNe Ia samples. Our results highlight that a spectroscopic analysis of SNe Ia around peak brightness is crucial for identifying intrinsic colour variations and constructing a more complete and physically homogeneous SN Ia sample for precision cosmology. Si II

Abstract:

Kilonovae are the scientifically rich—but observationally elusive—optical transient phenomena associated with compact binary mergers. Only a handful of events have been discovered to date, all through multiwavelength (gamma-ray) and multimessenger (gravitational-wave) signals. Given their scarcity, it is important to maximise the discovery possibility of new kilonova events. To this end, we present our follow-up observations of the gravitational-wave signal S250818k—a plausible binary neutron star merger at a distance of 237 ± 62 Mpc. Pan-STARRS tiled 286 and 318 deg2 (32% and 34% of the 90% sky localisation region) within 3 and 7 days of the GW signal, respectively. ATLAS covered 65% of the sky map within 3 days, but with lower sensitivity. These observations uncovered 47 new transients; however, none were deemed to be linked to S250818k. We undertook an expansive follow-up campaign of AT2025ulz, the purported counterpart to S250818k. The griz-band light curve, combined with our redshift measurement (z = 0.0849 ± 0.0003), all indicate that SN2025ulz is a type IIb supernova and thus not the counterpart to S250818k. We rule out the presence of an AT2017gfo-like kilonova within ≈27% of the distance posterior sampled by our Pan-STARRS pointings (≈9.1% across the total 90% 3D sky localisation). We demonstrate that early observations are optimal for probing the distance posterior of the 3D gravitational-wave sky map, and that SN2025ulz was a plausible kilonova candidate for ≲5 days, before ultimately being ruled out.