Detection of a possible superluminous supernova in the epoch of reionization

TL;DR

A transient possibly representing a superluminous supernova at redshift 6 was detected in deep fields observed with DECam, showcasing the potential to observe extremely luminous supernovae during the epoch of reionization.

Contribution

First detection of a superluminous supernova candidate at z ~ 6 using deep field observations with DECam, highlighting the capability to study such events in the early universe.

Findings

Transient is an i-band dropout at z ~ 6.

Luminosity comparable to the brightest superluminous supernovae.

Detection demonstrates the feasibility of observing superluminous supernovae during reionization.

Abstract

An interesting transient has been detected in one of our three Dark Energy Camera deep fields. Observations of these deep fields take advantage of the high red sensitivity of DECam on the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory Blanco telescope. The survey includes the Y band with rest wavelength 1430{\AA} at z = 6. Survey fields (the Prime field 0555-6130, the 16hr field 1600-75 and the SUDSS New Southern Field) are deeper in Y than other infrared surveys. They are circumpolar, allowing all night to be used efficiently, exploiting the moon tolerance of 1 micron observations to minimize conflict with the Dark Energy Survey. As an i-band dropout (meaning that the flux decrement shortward of Lyman alpha is in the i bandpass), the transient we report here is a supernova candidate with z ~ 6, with a luminosity comparable to the brightest known current epoch superluminous supernova (i.e., ~ 2 x 10^11 solar luminosities).