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The success of Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) distance standardization for cosmology relies on a single global linear relationship between their peak luminosity and colour, the β parameter. However, there are several pieces of evidence and physical reasons to believe that this relation is not universal and may change within different subgroups, or even among individual objects. In this work, we allow β to vary among subpopulations with different observed properties in the cosmological fits. Although the inferred cosmological parameters are consistent with previous studies that assume a single colour–luminosity relation, we find that the SN data favour non-universal distributions of β when split according to SN colour and/or host-galaxy mass. For galaxy mass, we obtain a β-step relation in which low β values occur in more massive galaxies, a trend that can be explained by differing dust reddening laws for two types of environments. For colour, we find that bluer/redder SNe Ia are consistent with a lower/larger β. This trend is explained with β being a combination of a low intrinsic colour–luminosity relation dominant in bluer SNe and a higher extrinsic reddening relation dominant at redder colours. The host-galaxy mass-step correction always provides better distance calibration, regardless of the multiple β approaches, and we suggest that it may come from a difference in intrinsic colour–luminosity properties of SNe Ia in two types of environments. Additionally, we find that blue SNe in low-mass environments are better standard candles than the others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The division between stripped-envelope supernovae (SE-SNe) and superluminous supernovae (SLSNe) is not well-defined in either photometric or spectroscopic space. While a sharp luminosity threshold has been suggested, there remains an increasing number of transitional objects that reach this threshold without the spectroscopic signatures common to SLSNe. In this work, we present data and analysis on four SNe transitional between SE-SNe and SLSNe; the He-poor SNe 2019dwa and 2019cri, and the He-rich SNe 2019hge and 2019unb. Each object displays long-lived and variable photometric evolution with luminosities around the SLSN threshold of Mr < −19.8 mag. Spectroscopically however, these objects are similar to SE-SNe, with line velocities lower than either SE-SNe and SLSNe, and thus represent an interesting case of rare transitional events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present DES14X2fna, a high-luminosity, fast-declining Type IIb supernova (SN IIb) at redshift z  = 0.0453, detected by the Dark Energy Survey (DES). DES14X2fna is an unusual member of its class, with a light curve showing a broad, luminous peak reaching Mr ≃ −19.3 mag 20 d after explosion. This object does not show a linear decline tail in the light curve until ≃60 d after explosion, after which it declines very rapidly (4.30 ± 0.10 mag 100 d−1 in the r band). By fitting semi-analytic models to the photometry of DES14X2fna, we find that its light curve cannot be explained by a standard 56Ni decay model as this is unable to fit the peak and fast tail decline observed. Inclusion of either interaction with surrounding circumstellar material or a rapidly-rotating neutron star (magnetar) significantly increases the quality of the model fit. We also investigate the possibility for an object similar to DES14X2fna to act as a contaminant in photometric samples of SNe Ia for cosmology, finding that a similar simulated object is misclassified by a recurrent neural network (RNN)-based photometric classifier as an SN Ia in ∼1.1–2.4 per cent of cases in DES, depending on the probability threshold used for a positive classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the photometric and spectroscopic evolution of the Type II supernova (SN II) SN 2017ivv (also known as ASASSN-17qp). Located in an extremely faint galaxy (Mr  = −10.3 mag), SN 2017ivv shows an unprecedented evolution during the 2 yr of observations. At early times, the light curve shows a fast rise (∼6−8 d) to a peak of |${\it M}^{\rm max}_{g}= -17.84$| mag, followed by a very rapid decline of 7.94 ± 0.48 mag per 100 d in the V band. The extensive photometric coverage at late phases shows that the radioactive tail has two slopes, one steeper than that expected from the decay of 56Co (between 100 and 350 d), and another slower (after 450 d), probably produced by an additional energy source. From the bolometric light curve, we estimated that the amount of ejected 56Ni is ∼0.059 ± 0.003 M⊙. The nebular spectra of SN 2017ivv show a remarkable transformation that allows the evolution to be split into three phases: (1) Hα strong phase (<200 d); (2) Hα weak phase (between 200 and 350 d); and (3) Hα broad phase (>500 d). We find that the nebular analysis favours a binary progenitor and an asymmetric explosion. Finally, comparing the nebular spectra of SN 2017ivv to models suggests a progenitor with a zero-age main-sequence mass of 15–17 M⊙. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite vast improvements in the measurement of the cosmological parameters, the nature of dark energy and an accurate value of the Hubble constant (H0) in the Hubble–Lemaître law remain unknown. To break the current impasse, it is necessary to develop as many independent techniques as possible, such as the use of Type II supernovae (SNe II). The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the utility of SNe II for deriving accurate extragalactic distances, which will be an asset for the next generation of telescopes where more-distant SNe II will be discovered. More specifically, we present a sample from the Dark Energy Survey Supernova Program (DES-SN) consisting of 15 SNe II with photometric and spectroscopic information spanning a redshift range up to 0.35. Combining our DES SNe with publicly available samples, and using the standard candle method (SCM), we construct the largest available Hubble diagram with SNe II in the Hubble flow (70 SNe II) and find an observed dispersion of 0.27 mag. We demonstrate that adding a colour term to the SN II standardization does not reduce the scatter in the Hubble diagram. Although SNe II are viable as distance indicators, this work points out important issues for improving their utility as independent extragalactic beacons: find new correlations, define a more standard subclass of SNe II, construct new SN II templates, and dedicate more observing time to high-redshift SNe II. Finally, for the first time, we perform simulations to estimate the redshift-dependent distance-modulus bias due to selection effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report a framework for spectroscopic follow-up design for optimizing supernova photometric classification. The strategy accounts for the unavoidable mismatch between spectroscopic and photometric samples, and can be used even in the beginning of a new survey – without any initial training set. The framework falls under the umbrella of active learning (AL), a class of algorithms that aims to minimize labelling costs by identifying a few, carefully chosen, objects that have high potential in improving the classifier predictions. As a proof of concept, we use the simulated data released after the SuperNova Photometric Classification Challenge (SNPCC) and a random forest classifier. Our results show that, using only 12 per cent the number of training objects in the SNPCC spectroscopic sample, this approach is able to double purity results. Moreover, in order to take into account multiple spectroscopic observations in the same night, we propose a semisupervised batch-mode AL algorithm that selects a set of N = 5 most informative objects at each night. In comparison with the initial state using the traditional approach, our method achieves 2.3 times higher purity and comparable figure of merit results after only 180 d of observation, or 800 queries (73 per cent of the SNPCC spectroscopic sample size). Such results were obtained using the same amount of spectroscopic time necessary to observe the original SNPCC spectroscopic sample, showing that this type of strategy is feasible with current available spectroscopic resources. The code used in this work is available in the COINtoolbox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Astronomical observations of extended sources, such as cubes of integral field spectroscopy (IFS), encode autocorrelated spatial structures that cannot be optimally exploited by standard methodologies. This work introduces a novel technique to model IFS data sets, which treats the observed galaxy properties as realizations of an unobserved Gaussian Markov random field. The method is computationally efficient, resilient to the presence of low-signal-to-noise regions, and uses an alternative to Markov Chain Monte Carlo for fast Bayesian inference – the Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation. As a case study, we analyse 721 IFS data cubes of nearby galaxies from the CALIFA and PISCO surveys, for which we retrieve the maps of the following physical properties: age, metallicity, mass, and extinction. The proposed Bayesian approach, built on a generative representation of the galaxy properties, enables the creation of synthetic images, recovery of areas with bad pixels, and an increased power to detect structures in data sets subject to substantial noise and/or sparsity of sampling. A snippet code to reproduce the analysis of this paper is available in the COIN toolbox, together with the field reconstructions of the CALIFA and PISCO samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

photometric data from the Carnegie Supernovae Project-I. We analyse four colours (B -- V, u -- g, g -- r, and g -- Y) and find that SN II colour curves can be described by two linear regimes during the photospheric phase. The first (s1, colour) is steeper and has a median duration of ~40 d. The second, shallower slope (s2, colour) lasts until the end of the 'plateau' (***80 d). The two slopes correlate in the sense that steeper initial colour curves also imply steeper colour curves at later phases. As suggested by recent studies, SNe II form a continuous population of objects from the colour point of view as well. We investigate correlations between the observed colours and a range of photometric and spectroscopic parameters including the absolute magnitude, the V-band light-curve slopes, and metal-line strengths. We find that less luminous SNe II appear redder, a trend that we argue is not driven by uncorrected hostgalaxy reddening. While there is significant dispersion, we find evidence that redder SNe II (mainly at early epochs) display stronger metal-line equivalent widths. Host-galaxy reddening does not appear to be a dominant parameter, neither driving observed trends nor dominating the dispersion in observed colours. Intrinsic SN II colours are most probably dominated by photospheric temperature differences, with progenitor metallicity possibly playing a minor role. Such temperature differences could be related to differences in progenitor radius, together with the presence or absence of circumstellar material close to the progenitor stars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The maximum luminosity of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) depends on the oxygen abundance of the regions of the host galaxies, where they explode. This metallicity dependence reduces the dispersion in the Hubble diagram (HD) when included with the traditional two-parameter calibration of SN Ia light-curve parameters and absolute magnitude. In this work, we use empirical calibrations to carefully estimate the oxygen abundance of galaxies hosting SNe Ia from the SDSS-II/SN (Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova) survey at intermediate redshift by measuring their emission-line intensities. We also derive electronic temperature with the direct method for a small fraction of objects for consistency. We find a trend of decreasing oxygen abundance with increasing redshift for the most massive galaxies. Moreover, we study the dependence of the HD residuals (HR) with galaxy oxygen abundance obtaining a correlation in line with those found in other works. In particular, the HR versus oxygen abundance shows a slope of -0.186± 0.123 mag dex-1 (1.52s) in good agreement with theoretical expectations. This implies smaller distance modulii after corrections for SNe Ia in metal-rich galaxies. Based on our previous results on local SNe Ia, we propose this dependence to be due to the lower luminosity of the SNe Ia produced in more metal-rich environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the Dark Energy Survey (DES) discovery of DES15E2mlf, the most distant superluminous supernova (SLSN) spectroscopically confirmed to date. The light curves and Gemini spectroscopy of DES15E2mlf indicate that it is a Type I superluminous supernova (SLSN-I) at z = 1.861 (a lookback time of ~10 Gyr) and peaking at MAB = -22.3 ± 0.1 mag. Given the high redshift, our data probe the rest-frame ultraviolet (1400-3500 Å) properties of the SN, finding velocity of the C III feature changes by ~5600 km s-1 over 14 d around maximum light. We find the host galaxy of DES15E2mlf has a stellar mass of 3.5+ -2.43.6 × 109 M☉, which is more massive than the typical SLSN-I host galaxy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CO observations allow estimation of the gas content of molecular clouds, which trace the reservoir of cold gas fuelling star formation, as well as determination of extinction via H2 column density, N(H2). Here, we study millimetric and optical properties at 26 supernovae (SNe) locations of different types in a sample of 23 nearby galaxies, by combining molecular 12C16O (J = 1 → 0) resolved maps from the Extragalactic Database for Galaxy Evolution (EDGE) survey and optical Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS) from the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area (CALIFA) survey. We found an even clearer separation between type II and type Ibc SNe in terms of molecular gas than is found in the optical using Hα emission as a proxy for the current star formation (SF) rate, which reinforces the fact that SNe Ibc are more associated with SF environments. While AV at SN locations is similar for SNe II and SNe Ibc and higher than for SNe Ia, N(H2) is significantly higher for SNe Ibc than for SNe II and Ia. When compared with alternative extinction estimations made directly from SN photometry and spectroscopy, we find that our SNe Ibc also have redder colour excess, but showed standard Na I D absorption pseudo-equivalent widths (~1 Å). In some cases, we find no extinction when IT is estimated from the environment but high amounts of extinction when measured from SN observations, which suggests that circumstellar material or dust sublimation may be playing a role. This work serves as a benchmark for future studies combining last-generation millimetre and optical IFS instruments to reveal the local environmental properties of extragalactic SNe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CO observations allow estimation of the gas content of molecular clouds, which trace the reservoir of cold gas fuelling star formation, as well as determination of extinction via H2 column density, N(H2). Here, we study millimetric and optical properties at 26 supernovae (SNe) locations of different types in a sample of 23 nearby galaxies, by combining molecular 12C16O (J = 1 → 0) resolved maps from the Extragalactic Database for Galaxy Evolution (EDGE) survey and optical Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS) from the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area (CALIFA) survey. We found an even clearer separation between type II and type Ibc SNe in terms of molecular gas than is found in the optical using Hα emission as a proxy for the current star formation (SF) rate, which reinforces the fact that SNe Ibc are more associated with SF environments. While AV at SN locations is similar for SNe II and SNe Ibc and higher than for SNe Ia, N(H2) is significantly higher for SNe Ibc than for SNe II and Ia. When compared with alternative extinction estimations made directly from SN photometry and spectroscopy, we find that our SNe Ibc also have redder colour excess, but showed standard NaID absorption pseudo-equivalent widths (~1 Å). In some cases, we find no extinction when IT is estimated from the environment but high amounts of extinction when measured from SN observations, which suggests that circumstellar material or dust sublimation may be playing a role. This work serves as a benchmark for future studies combining last-generation millimetre and optical IFS instruments to reveal the local environmental properties of extragalactic SNe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a statistical analysis of the environments of 11 supernovae (SNe) which occurred in six nearby galaxies (z ≲ 0.016). All galaxies were observed with MUSE, the high spatial resolution integral-field spectrograph mounted to the 8 m VLT UT4. These data enable us to map the full spatial extent of host galaxies up to ∼3 effective radii. In this way, not only can one characterize the specific host environment of each SN, one can compare their properties with stellar populations within the full range of other environments within the host. We present a method that consists of selecting all HII regions found within host galaxies from 2D extinction-corrected Hα emission maps. These regions are then characterized in terms of their Hα equivalent widths, star formation rates and oxygen abundances. Identifying HII regions spatially coincident with SN explosion sites, we are thus able to determine where within the distributions of host galaxy e.g. metallicities and ages each SN is found, thus providing new constraints on SN progenitor properties. This initial pilot study using MUSE opens the way for a revolution in SN environment studies where we are now able to study multiple environment SN progenitor dependencies using a single instrument and single pointing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present constraints on Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) progenitors through an analysis of the environments found at the explosion sites of 102 events within star-forming host galaxies. Hα and Galaxy Evolution Explorer near-ultraviolet (UV) images are used to trace on-going and recent star formation (SF), while broad-band B, R, J, K imaging is also analysed. Using pixel statistics we find that SNe Ia show the lowest degree of association with Hα emission of all supernova (SN) types. It is also found that they do not trace near-UV emission. As the latter traces SF on time-scales less than 100 Myr, this rules out any extreme ‘prompt’ delay times as the dominant progenitor channel of SNe Ia. SNe Ia best trace the B-band light distribution of their host galaxies. This implies that the population within star-forming galaxies is dominated by relatively young progenitors. Splitting SNe by their (B − V) colours at maximum light, ‘redder’ events show a higher degree of association with H ii regions and are found more centrally within hosts. We discuss possible explanations of this result in terms of line-of-sight extinction and progenitor effects. No evidence for correlations between SN stretch and environment properties is observed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]