Illuminating the Primeval Universe with Type IIn Supernovae

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that Pop III Type IIn supernovae, especially those interacting with dense circumstellar shells, could be detected at high redshifts with JWST and WFIRST, enabling direct study of the early universe.

Contribution

The study presents detailed simulations of Pop III Type IIn supernovae light curves and spectra, showing their potential detectability at high redshifts with upcoming telescopes.

Findings

Pop III Type IIn SNe can be visible up to z ~ 20 with JWST.

Collision with circumstellar shells significantly increases supernova brightness.

Even low-mass Pop III SNe are promising probes of the early universe.

Abstract

The detection of Pop III supernovae could directly probe the primordial IMF for the first time, unveiling the properties of the first galaxies, early chemical enrichment and reionization, and the seeds of supermassive black holes. Growing evidence that some Pop III stars were less massive than 100 solar masses may complicate prospects for their detection, because even though they would have been more plentiful they would have died as core-collapse supernovae, with far less luminosity than pair-instability explosions. This picture greatly improves if the SN shock collides with a dense circumstellar shell ejected during a prior violent LBV type eruption. Such collisions can turn even dim SNe into extremely bright ones whose luminosities can rival those of pair-instability SNe. We present simulations of Pop III Type IIn SN light curves and spectra performed with the Los Alamos RAGE and SPECTRUM codes. Taking into account Lyman-alpha absorption in the early universe and cosmological redshifting, we find that 40 solar mass Pop III Type IIn SNe will be visible out to z ~ 20 with JWST and out to z ~ 7 with WFIRST. Thus, even low mass Pop III SNe can be used to probe the primeval universe.