On rates of supernovae strongly lensed by galactic haloes in Millennium Simulation

TL;DR

This paper uses Millennium Simulation data to estimate the rates of strongly lensed supernovae, predicting detection numbers for future surveys like Gaia and LSST, and highlighting their potential for cosmology.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed rate estimates of strongly lensed supernovae from cosmological simulations for upcoming wide-field surveys.

Findings

At redshift > 0.5, 0.06% of supernovae are strongly lensed by a factor of two or more.

Gaia is expected to detect at least 2 lensed supernovae since 2013.

LSST will detect over 500 lensed supernovae annually from 2018.

Abstract

We make use of publicly available results from N-body Millennium Simulation to create mock samples of lensed supernovae type Ia and core-collapse. Simulating galaxy-galaxy lensing we derive the rates of lensed supernovae and find than at redshifts higher that 0.5 about 0.06 per cent of supernovae will be lensed by a factor two or more. Future wide field surveys like Gaia or LSST should be able to detect lensed supernovae in their unbiased sky monitoring. Gaia (from 2013) will detect at least 2 cases whereas LSST (from 2018) will see more than 500 a year. Large number of future lensed supernovae will allow to verify results of cosmological simulations. The strong galaxy- galaxy lensing gives an opportunity to reach high-redshift supernovae type Ia and extend the Hubble diagram sample.