The volumetric rate of superluminous supernovae at z ∼ 1
Abstract
We present a measurement of the volumetric rate of superluminous supernovae (SLSNe) at z ∼ 1.0, measured using archival data from the first four years of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS). We develop a method for the photometric classification of SLSNe to construct our sample. Our sample includes two previously spectroscopically identified objects, and a further new candidate selected using our classification technique. We use the point-source recovery efficiencies from Perrett et al. and a Monte Carlo approach to calculate the rate based on our SLSN sample. We find that the three identified SLSNe from SNLS give a rate of 91^{+76}_{-36} SNe yr-1 Gpc-3 at a volume-weighted redshift of z = 1.13. This is equivalent to 2.2^{+1.8}_{-0.9}× 10^{-4} of the volumetric core-collapse supernova rate at the same redshift. When combined with other rate measurements from the literature, we show that the rate of SLSNe increases with redshift in a manner consistent with that of the cosmic star formation history. We also estimate the rate of ultra-long gamma-ray bursts based on the events discovered by the Swift satellite, and show that it is comparable to the rate of SLSNe, providing further evidence of a possible connection between these two classes of events. We also examine the host galaxies of the SLSNe discovered in SNLS, and find them to be consistent with the stellar-mass distribution of other published samples of SLSNe.
- Publication:
-
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- January 2017
- DOI:
- 10.1093/mnras/stw1942
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1605.05250
- Bibcode:
- 2017MNRAS.464.3568P
- Keywords:
-
- surveys;
- supernovae: general;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena;
- Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- Submitted to MNRAS