Detecting strongly lensed supernovae at z ~ 5-7 with LSST

Understand

Supernovae (SNe) could be powerful probes of the properties of stars and galaxies at high redshifts in future surveys.

• Wide fields and longer exposure times are required to offset diminishing star formation rates and lower fluxes to detect useful numbers of events at high redshift.
• In principle, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) could discover large numbers of early SNe because of its wide fields but only at lower redshifts because of its AB mag limit of ~ 24.
• But gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters and massive galaxies could boost flux from ancient SNe and allow LSST to detect them at earlier times.