Shock cooling of a red-supergiant supernova at redshift 3 in lensed images

Wenlei Chen (), Patrick L. Kelly, Masamune Oguri, Thomas J. Broadhurst, Jose M. Diego, Najmeh Emami, Alexei V. Filippenko, Tommaso L. Treu and Adi Zitrin
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Wenlei Chen: University of Minnesota
Patrick L. Kelly: University of Minnesota
Masamune Oguri: Chiba University
Thomas J. Broadhurst: University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU
Jose M. Diego: IFCA, Instituto de Física de Cantabria (UC-CSIC)
Najmeh Emami: University of Minnesota
Alexei V. Filippenko: University of California
Tommaso L. Treu: University of California
Adi Zitrin: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Nature, 2022, vol. 611, issue 7935, 256-259

Abstract: Abstract The core-collapse supernova of a massive star rapidly brightens when a shock, produced following the collapse of its core, reaches the stellar surface. As the shock-heated star subsequently expands and cools, its early-time light curve should have a simple dependence on the size of the progenitor1 and therefore final evolutionary state. Measurements of the radius of the progenitor from early light curves exist for only a small sample of nearby supernovae2–14, and almost all lack constraining ultraviolet observations within a day of explosion. The several-day time delays and magnifying ability of galaxy-scale gravitational lenses, however, should provide a powerful tool for measuring the early light curves of distant supernovae, and thereby studying massive stellar populations at high redshift. Here we analyse individual rest-frame exposures in the ultraviolet to the optical taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, which simultaneously capture, in three separate gravitationally lensed images, the early phases of a supernova at redshift z ≈ 3 beginning within 5.8 ± 3.1 hours of explosion. The supernova, seen at a lookback time of approximately 11.5 billion years, is strongly lensed by an early-type galaxy in the Abell 370 cluster. We constrain the pre-explosion radius to be $$53{3}_{-119}^{+154}$$ 53 3 − 119 + 154 solar radii, consistent with a red supergiant. Highly confined and massive circumstellar material at the same radius can also reproduce the light curve, but because no similar low-redshift examples are known, this is unlikely.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05252-5

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