Detectability of High-Redshift Superluminous Supernovae with Upcoming Optical and Near-Infrared Surveys - II. Beyond z=6

TL;DR

This paper uses detailed simulations to evaluate the potential of upcoming optical and near-infrared surveys to detect superluminous supernovae at very high redshifts, including beyond z=10, which could reveal the first stars.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed estimates of the detectability of high-redshift superluminous supernovae with planned surveys, highlighting the importance of >3 μm observations for z>10 detection.

Findings

A 100 deg^2 survey at 26 mag can find ~10 SLSNe at z>10.

Extending to 200 deg^2 at 27 mag can find ~10 SLSNe at z>15.

Euclid, WFIRST, and WISH can detect hundreds to thousands of SLSNe up to z~12.

Abstract

Observational identification of the first stars is one of the great challenges in the modern astronomy. Although a single first star is too faint to be detected, supernova explosions of the first stars can be bright enough. An important question is whether such supernovae can be detected in the limited observational area with realistic observational resources. We perform detailed simulations to study the detectability of superluminous supernovae (SLSNe) at high redshifts, using the observationally-calibrated star formation rate density and supernova occurrence rate. We show that a 100 deg^2 survey with the limiting magnitude of 26 mag in near-infrared wavelengths will be able to discover about 10 SLSNe at z > 10. If the survey is extended to 200 deg^2 with 27 mag depth, about 10 SLSNe can be discovered at z > 15. We emphasize that the observations at > 3 um are crucial to detect and select SLSNe at z > 10. Our simulations are also applied to the planned survey with Euclid, WFIRST, and WISH. These surveys will be able to detect about 1000, 400, and 3000 SLSNe up to z ~ 5, 7, and 12, respectively. We conclude that detection of SLSNe at z > 10 is in fact achievable in the near future.