iPTF16geu: A multiply imaged, gravitationally lensed type Ia supernova

Abstract

We report the discovery of a multiply-imaged gravitationally lensed Type Ia supernova, iPTF16geu (SN 2016geu), at redshift $z=0.409$. This phenomenon could be identified because the light from the stellar explosion was magnified more than fifty times by the curvature of space around matter in an intervening galaxy. We used high spatial resolution observations to resolve four images of the lensed supernova, approximately 0.3" from the center of the foreground galaxy. The observations probe a physical scale of $\sim$1 kiloparsec, smaller than what is typical in other studies of extragalactic gravitational lensing. The large magnification and symmetric image configuration implies close alignment between the line-of-sight to the supernova and the lens. The relative magnifications of the four images provide evidence for sub-structures in the lensing galaxy.Comment: Matches published versio

Multimessenger time delays from lensed gravitational waves

“…7 about the axis A = 1. We note in passing that the magnification values discussed here are comparable to the recent detection of SN iPTF16geu, the first multiply-imaged Type Ia SN, with a total magnification µ ∼ 56 [54].…”

Primordial black holes survive SN lensing constraints

“…Moreover, that galaxies and smaller structures can actually lense type-Ia supernovae has recently been shown in Refs. [52,53] with explicit examples. It will therefore not come as a surprise if in the future we will discover a whole population of lensed type-Ia SN.…”

Cosmological Distance Indicators

“…In the fall of 2016, the first spatially-resolved multiply-imaged Type Ia SN, iPTF16geu, was discovered by Goobar (2017) in the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory survey. independently modeled a single-epoch HST image of the system, finding short model-predicted time delays (< 1 day) between the multiple images.…”

“…Both SN Refsdal and iPTF16geu have been monitored for time-delay measurements Goobar 2017), opening a new window to study cosmology with strongly-lensed SN. Recently Grillo et al (2018) estimated the time delay of the image SX of SN Refsdal based on the detection presented in Kelly et al (2016b) (image SX has the longest delay compared to other images of SN Refsdal, so image SX will ultimately provide the most precise time-delay measurement for cosmography from this system), and modeled the mass distribution of the galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5+2223 to infer H 0 .…”