Uncovering a population of gravitational lens galaxies with magnified standard candle SN Zwicky

Abstract

Detecting gravitationally lensed supernovae is among the biggest challenges in astronomy. It involves a combination of two very rare phenomena: catching the transient signal of a stellar explosion in a distant galaxy and observing it through a nearly perfectly aligned foreground galaxy that deflects light towards the observer. High-cadence optical observations with the Zwicky Transient Facility, with an unparalleled large field of view, led to the detection of a multiply-imaged Type Ia supernova (SN Ia), ``SN Zwicky", a.k.a. SN 2022qmx. Magnified nearly twenty-five times, the system was found thanks to the ``standard candle" nature of SNe Ia. High-spatial resolution imaging with the Keck telescope resolved four images of the supernova with very small angular separation, corresponding to an Einstein radius of only ${\theta }_E=0.167"$ and almost identical arrival times. The small ${\theta }_E$ and faintness of the lensing galaxy is very unusual, highlighting the importance of supernovae to fully characterise the properties of galaxy-scale gravitational lenses, including the impact of galaxy substructures.

arXiv commentMatches published version in Nature Astronomy

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