Roman CCS White Paper: Identifying high-redshift pair-instability supernovae by adding sparse F213 filter observations

TL;DR

This paper proposes adding sparse F213 filter observations to the Roman Space Telescope's survey to improve the identification of high-redshift pair-instability supernovae, aiding studies of early universe evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a novel observational strategy involving sparse F213 filter data to efficiently detect PISNe at z > 6.

Findings

F213 observations enable better color-based identification of high-redshift PISNe.

Adding F213 data improves detection efficiency of PISNe at z > 6.

Proposed method reaches 26.5 mag sensitivity every half year.

Abstract

Pair-instability supernovae (PISNe) are explosions of very massive stars that may have played a critical role in the chemical evolution and reionization of the early Universe. In order to quantify their roles, it is required to know the PISN event rate at z > 6. Although Roman Space Telescope has a capability to discover PISNe at z > 6, identifying rare high-redshift PISN candidates among many other transients is challenging. In order to efficiently identify PISN candidates at z > 6, we propose to add sparse F213 observations reaching 26.5 mag (or deeper) every half year in the High Latitude Time Domain Survey. By adding the F213 information, PISNe at z > 6 can be efficiently identified in the color-magnitude diagram.