Detecting the First Supernovae in the Universe with JWST

Massive Population III stars die as pair-instability supernovae (PI SNe), the most energetic thermonuclear explosions in the universe with energies up to 100 times those of Type Ia or Type II SNe. Their extreme luminosities may allow them to be observed from the earliest epochs, revealing the nature of Pop III stars and the primitive galaxies in which they reside. We present numerical simulations of Pop III PI SNe done with the radiation hydrodynamics code RAGE and calculations of their light curves and spectra performed with the SPECTRUM code. We find that 150 - 250 M_⊙ PI SNe will be visible to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) out to z ~ 30 and to z ~ 15 - 20 in all-sky NIR surveys by the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).