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Abstract:

In the coming years, the Vera Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (Rubin-LSST) and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s (Roman) High Latitude Time Domain Survey (HLTDS) are expected to discover more than a million Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), several orders of magnitude more than current samples and with a tighter control on systematic uncertainties. One of the largest systematic uncertainties in cosmological analyses with SNe Ia is the accuracy of the spectrophotometric model for SNe Ia time series data, which depends on the photometric calibration of the surveys. To quantify the impact of this uncertainty, we analyze simulated Rubin-LSST and HLTDS data, perturb the photometric zero-points and filter mean wavelengths, and propagate these systematics to spectral model recovery, estimated distances, and dark energy Figure of Merit (FoM) based on the w0waCDM model. Zero-point shifts of 5 mmag and filter mean wavelength shifts of 5 Å lead to a ∼50% decrease in the FoM relative to a statistical-only case when calibration uncertainties are propagated only through light-curve fitting. The same calibration shifts applied only during model training produce a smaller ∼13% degradation. Contrary to previous analyses, calibration uncertainties in light-curve fitting dominate over those from model training. Their effect during light-curve fitting varies smoothly with redshift and is nearly degenerate with cosmology, preventing mitigation through self-calibration. Finally, we show that the FoM dependence on the size of the calibration uncertainties (in the range of expected sizes) is roughly linear.

Abstract:

Abstract On 2025 August 18, the LIGO – Virgo – KAGRA collaboration reported S250818k, a subthreshold gravitational-wave (GW) candidate consistent with a binary neutron star (NS) merger potentially involving a subsolar-mass NS. Optical follow-up by the Zwicky Transient Facility identified a transient temporally coinciding with the GW trigger that initially resembled a kilonova but was later classified as a young stripped-envelope Type IIb supernova (SN), dubbed SN 2025ulz. A key question is whether SN 2025ulz harbors fast, possibly collimated, nonthermal ejecta indicative of a central engine, as invoked in “superkilonova” scenarios linking subsolar-mass NSs to accretion-disk fragmentation or core fission. We present early-to-late-time multiband radio observations of SN 2025ulz obtained with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array as part of the JAGWAR program, complemented by observations with the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope and MeerKAT. We detect a faint but significant radio counterpart to SN 2025ulz at 6−10 GHz. The data are consistent with nonthermal emission from SN ejecta interacting with circumstellar material. Our data are also consistent with emission from an off-axis jet peaking at ∼50−100 days after the GW trigger. While we cannot distinguish between these two interpretations, our radio detection motivates future systematic multiwavelength follow-up of core-collapse events coinciding with subsolar NS GW candidates, should the association between S250818k and SN 2025ulz be supported by offline GW analyses.

Abstract:

There is a general consensus that Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) comprise the thermonuclear explosions of a C/O white dwarf (WD) in a binary system. However, the nature of their progenitors and explosion mechanism still remains elusive. Their early light curves can offer strong constraints on these parameters, as they trace the outermost layers and provide evidence of their initial conditions. In this work, we study the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) data release 2 sample of SNe Ia in search for objects with early flux excess (EEx SNe Ia). Two main approaches were used: i) finding deviations between early-time observations and models without early excess and ii) finding an agreement between observations and models with early excess. For the former approach, different methods, such as power-law and SALT2 fits, were used to identify EEx SN Ia candidates. For the second approach, we used double-detonation (DD) and companion-interaction (CI) models, finding 145 and 199 candidates, respectively. In general, there is a disagreement between the methods in the exact objects identified as EEx SNe Ia as well as in their number. By combining multiple methods, we found 17 strong EEx SN Ia candidates, 6 of which are of the overluminous subtype (five 91T-like and one 03 fg-like). The most prominent excesses reach ∼10–17% of peak flux (up to ∼−17 mag). We found that the best EEx SN Ia candidates have higher stretch on average compared to the rest of the SNe Ia. They also seem to prefer lower mass and bluer host galaxies, potentially linked to younger stellar populations. Additionally, we estimated the fraction of EEx SNe Ia to be ≲25% of all SNe Ia, in agreement with previous works, with overluminous subtypes having a higher relative fraction compared to normal SNe Ia. When studying the parameter distribution of the DD models for the EEx SN Ia candidates, we see a preference for intermediate WD core mass (1 M ⊙ ), a lower fraction of shell burning (20%), and heavier He-burning products ( 56 Ni). For the CI models, we see no trends with any of the parameters. We are unable to draw strong conclusions on whether one model is preferred over the other as a viable description of SN Ia explosions Finally, we highlight the challenge of identifying EEx SNe Ia in real time, making the triggering of early-time spectroscopic observations for these objects a difficult task.