On the event rate and luminosity function of superluminous supernovae

TL;DR

This paper estimates the rate and luminosity function of hydrogen-poor superluminous supernovae, finding the rate to be about 40 per year per cubic gigaparsec at redshift 0.89, and shows a better fit with a power-law luminosity function.

Contribution

It compares two luminosity function models and determines that a power-law form better describes the data, providing an updated superluminous supernovae rate estimate.

Findings

Power-law luminosity function fits data better than log-normal.

Superluminous supernovae rate is about 40 yr^{-1} Gpc^{-3} at z=0.89.

Rate proportional to cosmic star formation rate with no additional redshift evolution.

Abstract

We calculate the rate per unit volume of hydrogen-poor superluminous supernovae (SLSNe-I) based on the 17 events discovered with the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey (PS1 MDS). Two forms of the luminosity function (LF) are assumed : a log-normal form and a single power-law form, respectively. The rate of SLSNe-I is assumed to be proportional to the cosmic star formation rate with an additional redshift evolution of $(1+z)^{\alpha}$. Our results show that the single power-low form fits the data better than the log-normal form, and the event rate of SLSNe-I is proportional to the cosmic star formation rate directly (with $\alpha=0$). We measure the SLSNe-I rate to be about $40 ~\rm{yr^{-1}Gpc^{-3} }$ at a weighted mean redshift of $\overline z=0.89$, which is consistent with previous works.