Properties of high-redshift Type II supernovae discovered by the JADES transient survey

TL;DR

This study models light curves of six high-redshift Type II supernovae discovered by JWST, revealing diverse explosion energies, potential dense circumstellar matter, and dust obscuration, providing initial insights into their properties at early cosmic times.

Contribution

First analysis of high-redshift Type II supernovae using JWST data, highlighting explosion energy diversity and the presence of dense circumstellar matter at early cosmic epochs.

Findings

Two supernovae have high explosion energies of 3e51 erg.

Dense circumstellar matter may be common in high-redshift Type II SNe.

JWST can detect dust-obscured supernovae at high redshifts.

Abstract

In this work we estimate the explosion and progenitor properties of six Type II supernovae (SNe) at 0.675 <= z <= 3.61 discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) transient survey by modeling their light curves. Two Type II SNe are found to have high explosion energies of 3e51 erg, while the other four Type II SNe are estimated to have typical explosion energies found in the local Universe [(0.5-2)e51 erg]. The fraction of Type II SNe with high explosion energies might be higher at high redshifts because of, e.g., lower metallicity, but it is still difficult to draw a firm conclusion because of the small sample size and potential observational biases. We found it difficult to constrain the progenitor masses for Type II SNe in our sample because of the sparse light-curve data. We found two Type II SN light curves can be better reproduced by introducing confined, dense circumstellar matter. Thus, the confined, dense circumstellar matter frequently observed in nearby Type II SNe is likely to exist in Type II SNe at high redshifts as well. Two Type II SNe are estimated to have high host galaxy extinctions, showing the ability of JWST to discover dust-obscured SNe at high redshifts. More high-redshift Type II SNe are required to investigate the differences in the properties of Type II SNe near and far, but here we show the first glimpse into the high-redshift population of Type II SNe.