Observational properties of extreme supernovae

TL;DR

This paper reviews the observational properties of extreme supernovae, including superluminous supernovae and fast blue optical transients, highlighting their significance for understanding stellar explosions and cosmology.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the observational data, physical interpretations, and progenitor models of these extreme supernovae, emphasizing recent advances and future prospects.

Findings

Exponential growth in discoveries of extreme supernovae.

Enhanced understanding of their physical mechanisms.

Potential applications in high-redshift cosmology.

Abstract

The last ten years have opened up a new parameter space in time-domain astronomy with the discovery of transients defying our understanding of how stars explode. These extremes of the transient paradigm represent the brightest - called superluminous supernova - and the fastest - known as fast, blue optical transients - of the transient zoo. The number of their discoveries and information gained per event have witnessed an exponential growth that has benefited observational and theoretical studies. The collected dataset and the understanding of such events have surpassed any initial expectation and opened up a future exploding with potential, spanning from novel tools of high-redshift cosmological investigation to new insights into the final stages of massive stars. Here, the observational properties of extreme supernovae are reviewed and put in the context of their physics, possible progenitor scenarios and explosion mechanisms.