Observing high-redshift Supernovae in lensed galaxies

Abstract

Supernovae in distant galaxies that are gravitationally lensed by foreground galaxy clusters make excellent cosmological candles for measuring quantities like the density of the Universe in its various components and the Hubble constant. Distant supernovae will be more easily detectable since foreground cluster lenses would magnify such supernovae by up to 3-4 magnitudes. We show that in the case of the lens cluster Abell 2218, the detectability of high-redshift supernovae is significantly enhanced due to the lensing effects of the cluster. Since lensed supernovae will remain point images even when their host galaxies are stretched into arcs, the signal-to-noise ratio for their observation will be further enhanced, typically by an order of magnitude. We recommend monitoring well-modelled clusters with several known arclets for the detection of cosmologically useful SNe around z=1 and beyond.