Speaker
Description
Last year, the supernova cosmology team at the Oskar Klein Centre made an exciting discovery. With the Zwicky Transient Facility, we observed a supernova which was gravitationally lensed by a massive galaxy, resulting in four images of the same object. The lensed supernova, baptised ‘SN Zwicky’, points to a poorly understood population of low-mass lens galaxies. Gravitationally lensed supernovae are incredibly rare phenomena that can give valuable insights into high-redshift SN physics, substructures in massive galaxies, and the cosmic expansion rate. Currently, the lensed supernova field is at a turning point, as we will go from a handful of present discoveries to several hundreds per year with the advance of the next generation of telescopes. In this talk, I will present the discovery story of SN Zwicky and look ahead at the prospects of detecting lensed supernovae and constraining cosmology with the upcoming Vera Rubin Observatory.
