A search for transients in the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS): Three new supernovae

Abstract

The Reionization Cluster Survey (RELICS) imaged 41 galaxy clusters with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), in order to detect lensed and high-redshift galaxies. Each cluster was imaged to about 26.5 AB mag in three optical and four near-infrared bands, taken in two distinct visits separated by varying time intervals. We make use of the multiple near-infrared epochs to search for transient sources in the cluster fields, with the primary motivation of building statistics for bright caustic crossing events in gravitational arcs. Over the whole sample, we do not find any significant ($\gtrsim 5\sigma$) caustic crossing events, in line with expectations from semi-analytic calculations but in contrast to what may be naively expected from previous detections of some bright events, or from deeper transient surveys that do find high rates of such events. Nevertheless, we find six prominent supernova (SN) candidates over the 41 fields: three of them were previously reported and three are new ones reported here for the first time. Out of the six candidates, four are likely core-collapse (CC) SNe -- three in cluster galaxies, and among which only one was known before, and one slightly behind the cluster at $z\sim 0.6-0.7$. The other two are likely Ia -- both of them previously known, one probably in a cluster galaxy, and one behind it at $z\simeq 2$. Our study supplies empirical bounds for the rate of caustic crossing events in galaxy cluster fields to typical HST magnitudes, and lays the groundwork for a future SN rate study.

Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 10 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (17)

• The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
• EAZY: A Fast, Public Photometric Redshift Code
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova Survey: Technical Summary
• Galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field: I. Detection, Multiband Photometry, Photometric Redshifts, and Morphology
• Multiple Images of a Highly Magnified Supernova Formed by an Early-Type Cluster Galaxy Lens
• A complete sample of twelve very X-ray luminous galaxy clusters at z>0.5
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova Survey: Search Algorithm and Follow-up Observations
• Understanding caustic crossings in giant arcs: characteristic scales, event rates, and constraints on compact dark matter
• A Highly Magnified Star at Redshift 6.2
• Evidence for an intermediate-mass black hole from a gravitationally lensed gamma-ray burst
• Microlensing of Extremely Magnified Stars near Caustics of Galaxy Clusters
• JWST Imaging of Earendel, the Extremely Magnified Star at Redshift $z=6.2$
• SALT3-NIR: Taking the Open-Source Type Ia Supernova Model to Longer Wavelengths for Next-Generation Cosmological Measurements
• High-redshift supernova rates measured with the gravitational telescope A1689
• The delay time distribution of Type-Ia supernovae in galaxy clusters: the impact of extended star-formation histories
• Chemical abundances in the outskirts of nearby galaxy groups measured with joint Suzaku and Chandra observations
• Early results from GLASS-JWST VIII: An Extremely Magnified Blue Supergiant Star at Redshift 2.65 in the Abell 2744 Cluster Field