Strongly lensed supernovae: lessons learned

Abstract

Since about a decade, we have finally entered the era of discoveries of multiply-imaged gravitationally lensed supernovae. To date, all cluster lensed supernovae, very distant, faint and spatially resolved, have been found from space. In contrast, those deflected by individual galaxies have been very compact and bright enough to be identified with wide-field ground-based surveys through the magnification of "standard candles" method, i.e., without the need of spatially resolving the individual images. We review the challenges in identifying these extremely rare events, as well as the unique opportunities they offer for two major applications: time-delay cosmography and the study of the properties of the deflecting bodies acting as lenses.