A highly magnified star at redshift 6.2

Welch, Brian; Coe, Dan; Diego, J. M.; Zitrin, A.; Zackrisson, Erik; Dimauro, Paola; Jiménez-Teja, Y.; Kelly, Patrick L.; Mahler, Guillaume; Oguri, Masamune; Timmes, F. X.; Windhorst, Rogier A.; Florian, Michael; Mink, S. E. de; Avila, Roberto J.; Anderson, Jay; Bradley, Larry; Sharon, Keren; Vikaeus, Anton; McCandliss, Stephan R.; Bradač, Maruša; Rigby, J. Keith; Frye, Brenda; Toft, Sune; Strait, Victoria; Trenti, Michele; Sharma, Soniya; Andrade-Santos, Felipe; Broadhurst, Tom

doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04449-y

Cited by 71 publications

(97 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…Although spectral measurements of Earendel are still not available, and photometric measurements are relatively poor, it is believed that Earendel is a star with very low metallicity and very luminous. Earlier estimates in Welch et al (2022) would put Earendel in pair with the most luminous stars known in our local volume (R < 40 Mpc). As in the case of Godzilla discussed above, no significant flux variations are appreciated during the two epochs (3 years apart) where Earendel was observed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…This is consistent with the magnification of the star being in the range of several thousands. In this situation, as discussed in Diego et al (2022) and Welch et al (2022), there is an effect known as the "more-is-less" effect, where increassing the magnification results in more overlapping microcaustics in the source plane. Crossing one of these microcaustics results in a relatively small change in flux, since the flux linked to other microcaustics is still significant, and remain more or less constant during the microcaustic crossing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The latest example of an extremely magnified star is also the most distant one. Welch et al (2022) reports the discovery of Earendel, a strongly magnified star at a record breaking redshift z = 6.2, peering into the end of the reionization epoch. Although unlikely to be a Pop III star, Earendel represents one of the missing links in the evolution of stellar populations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A fast algorithm for simulating light curves of stars at extreme magnification affected by microlensing

Diego

2022

Preprint

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We present a fast algorithm to produce light curves of distant stars undergoing microlensing near critical curves. The need of these type of algorithms is motivated by recent observations of microlensing events of distant stars at high redshift and at extreme magnification factors. The algorithm relies on a low-resolution computation of the deflection field due to an ensemble of microlenses near critical curves, and takes advantage of the slowly varying nature of the deflection field to infer the magnification of the unresolved images.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 74%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A fast algorithm for simulating light curves of stars at extreme magnification affected by microlensing

Diego

2022

Preprint

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“…Intervening mass along the lineof-sight of conventional observations acts to magnify the observed radiation, allowing the detection of background objects whose direct EM radiation would be otherwise too faint because of their distance. This enabled the detection of increasingly remote galaxy populations (Kneib et al 2004;Bouwens et al 2014) and even individual stars at high redshifts (Kelly et al 2018;Welch et al 2022). Similarly, gravitational lensing can play a key role to investigate distant populations of GW sources, reaching beyond the limited sensitivity of current detectors, in particular in the low mass regime of binary neutron stars ★ mbianconi@star.sr.bham.ac.uk (Smith et al 2022, and references therein).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the gravitational lensing interpretation of three gravitational wave detections in the mass gap by LIGO and Virgo

Bianconi¹,

Smith²,

Nicholl³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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We search for gravitational wave (GW) events from LIGO-Virgo's third run that may have been affected by gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing delays the arrival of GWs, and alters their amplitude -thus biasing the inferred progenitor masses. This would provide a physically well-understood interpretation of GW detections in the "mass gap" between neutron stars and black holes, as gravitationally lensed binary neutron star (BNS) mergers. We selected three GW detections in LIGO-Virgo's third run for which the probability of at least one of the constituent compact objects being in the mass gap was reported as high with low latency -i.e. candidate lensed BNS mergers. Our observations of powerful strong lensing clusters located adjacent to the peak of their sky localisation error maps reached a sensitivity AB 25.5 in the 𝑧 -band with the GMOS instruments on the Gemini telescopes, and detected no candidate lensed optical counterparts. We combine recent kilonova lightcurve models with recent predictions of the lensed BNS population and the properties of the objects that we followed up to show that realistic optical counterparts were detectable in our observations. Further detailed analysis of two of the candidates suggests that they are a plausible pair of images of the same low-mass binary black hole merger, lensed by a local galaxy or small group of galaxies. This further underlines that access to accurate mass information with low latency would improve the efficiency of candidate lensed NS-NS selection.

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“…While this state of affairs still holds broadly, inroads are being made. Observers have detected a star at redshift 6 (Welch et al 2022), galaxies as early as redshift 11 (Oesch et al 2016), a long gamma ray burst (GRB) at redshift 8 (Tanvir et al 2009), and quasars at redshifts 6 and 7 (Mortlock et al 2011;Wu et al 2015;Bañados et al 2018;Matsuoka et al 2019;Wang et al 2021). These high redshift observations have greatly increased our knowledge of the early universe, but they also raise questions-most notably, where did the high redshift quasars and their supermassive black hole (SMBH) engines come from?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stability analysis of supermassive primordial stars: a new mass range for general relativistic instability supernovae

Nagele¹,

Umeda²,

Takahashi³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Observed supermassive black holes in the early universe have several proposed formation channels, in part because most of these channels are difficult to probe. One of the more promising channels, the direct collapse of a supermassive star, has several possible probes including the explosion of a helium-core supermassive star triggered by a general relativistic instability. We develop a straightforward method for evaluating the general relativistic radial instability without simplifying assumptions and apply it to population III supermassive stars taken from a post Newtonian stellar evolution code. This method is more accurate than previous determinations and it finds that the instability occurs earlier in the evolutionary life of the star. Using the results of the stability analysis, we perform 1D general relativistic hydrodynamical simulations and we find two general relativistic instability supernovae fueled by alpha capture reactions as well as several lower mass pulsations, analogous to the puslational pair instability process. The mass range for the events (2.6-3.0 ×10 4 M ) is lower than had been suggested by previous works (5.5 ×10 4 M ) because the instability occurs earlier in the star's evolution. The explosion may be visible to, among others, JWST, while the discovery of the pulsations opens up additional possibilities for observation.

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A highly magnified star at redshift 6.2

Cited by 71 publications

References 80 publications

A fast algorithm for simulating light curves of stars at extreme magnification affected by microlensing

A fast algorithm for simulating light curves of stars at extreme magnification affected by microlensing

On the gravitational lensing interpretation of three gravitational wave detections in the mass gap by LIGO and Virgo

Stability analysis of supermassive primordial stars: a new mass range for general relativistic instability supernovae

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