Super-luminous supernovae at redshifts of 2.05 and 3.90

Understand

A rare class of `super-luminous' supernovae that are about ten or more times more luminous at their peaks than other types of luminous supernovae has recently been found at low to intermediate redshifts.

• A small subset of these events have luminosities that evolve slowly and result in radiated energies of around 10^51 ergs or more.
• Therefore, they are likely examples of `pair-instability' or `pulsational pair-instability' supernovae with estimated progenitor masses of 100 - 250 times that of the Sun.
• These events are exceedingly rare at low redshift, but are expected to be more common at high redshift because the mass distribution of the earliest stars was probably skewed to high values.