English

Testing for Intrinsic Type Ia Supernova Luminosity Evolution at z>2 with JWST

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2025-02-13 v3

Abstract

The James Webb Space Telescope} (JWST) is opening new frontiers of transient discovery and follow-up at high-redshift. Here we present the discovery of a spectroscopically confirmed Type Ia supernova (SN Ia; SN 20232023aeax) at z=2.15z=2.15 with JWST, including a NIRCam multi-band light curve. SN 20232023aeax lands at the edge of traditional low-zz cosmology cuts because of its blue color (peak rest-frame BV0.3B-V\sim-0.3) but with a normal decline rate (Δm15(B)1.25\Delta m_{15}(B)\sim1.25), and applying a fiducial standardization with the BayeSN model we find the SN 20232023aeax luminosity distance is in 0.1σ\sim0.1\sigma agreement with Λ\LambdaCDM. SN 20232023aeax is only the second spectroscopically confirmed SN Ia in the dark matter-dominated Universe at z>2z>2 (the other is SN 20232023adsy), giving it rare leverage to constrain any potential evolution in SN Ia standardized luminosities. Similar to SN 20232023adsy (BV0.8)B-V\sim0.8), SN 20232023aeax has a fairly extreme (but opposite) color, which may be due to the small sample size or a secondary factor, such as host galaxy properties. Nevertheless, the SN 20232023aeax spectrum is well-represented by normal low-zz SN Ia spectra and we find no definitive evolution in SN Ia standardization with redshift. Still, the first two spectroscopically confirmed z>2z>2 SNe Ia have peculiar colors and combine for a 1σ\sim1\sigma distance slope relative to Λ\LambdaCDM, though in agreement with recent SN Ia cosmological measurements.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2411.11953,
  title  = {Testing for Intrinsic Type Ia Supernova Luminosity Evolution at z>2 with JWST},
  author = {J. D. R. Pierel and D. A. Coulter and M. R. Siebert and H. B. Akins and M. Engesser and O. D. Fox and M. Franco and A. Rest and A. Agrawal and Y. Ajay and N. Allen and C. M. Casey and C. Decoursey and N. E. Drakos and E. Egami and A. L. Faisst and S. Gezari and G. Gozaliasl and O. Ilbert and D. O. Jones and M. Karmen and J. S. Kartaltepe and A. M. Koekemoer and Z. G. Lane and R. L. Larson and T. Li and D. Liu and T. J. Moriya and H. J. McCracken and L. Paquereau and R. M. Quimby and R. M. Rich and J. Rhodes and B. E. Robertson and D. B. Sanders and M. Shahbandeh and M. Shuntov and J. D. Silverman and L. G. Strolger and S. Toft and Y. Zenati},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.11953},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Accepted to ApJL. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2406.05089

R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:04:07.888Z