ZTF Early Observations of Type Ia Supernovae. I. Properties of the 2018 Sample

Yuhan Yao, Adam A. Miller, S. R. Kulkarni, Mattia Bulla, Frank J. Masci, Daniel A. Goldstein, Ariel Goobar, Peter Nugent, Alison Dugas, Nadia Blagorodnova, James D. Neill, Mickael Rigault, Jesper Sollerman, J. Nordin, Eric C. Bellm, S. Bradley Cenko, Kishalay De, Suhail Dhawan, Ulrich Feindt, C. FremlingPradip Gatkine, Matthew J. Graham, Melissa L. Graham, Anna Y.Q. Ho, T. Hung, Mansi M. Kasliwal, Thomas Kupfer, Russ R. Laher, Daniel A. Perley, Ben Rusholme, David L. Shupe, Maayane T. Soumagnac, K. Taggart, Richard Walters, Lin Yan

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Abstract

Early-time observations of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are essential to constrain the properties of their progenitors. In this paper, we present high-quality light curves of 127 SNe Ia discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) in 2018. We describe our method to perform forced point-spread function photometry, which can be applied to other types of extragalactic transients. With a planned cadence of six observations per night (three g + three r), all of the 127 SNe Ia are detected in both g and r bands more than 10 days (in the rest frame) prior to the epoch of g-band maximum light. The redshifts of these objects range from z = 0.0181 to 0.165; the median redshift is 0.074. Among the 127 SNe, 50 are detected at least 14 days prior to maximum light (in the rest frame), with a subset of nine objects being detected more than 17 days before g-band peak. This is the largest sample of young SNe Ia collected to date; it can be used to study the shape and color evolution of the rising light curves in unprecedented detail. We discuss six peculiar events in this sample: one 02cx-like event ZTF18abclfee (SN 2018crl), one Ia-CSM SN ZTF18aaykjei (SN 2018cxk), and four objects with possible super-Chandrasekhar mass progenitors: ZTF18abhpgje (SN 2018eul), ZTF18abdpvnd (SN 2018dvf), ZTF18aawpcel (SN 2018cir), and ZTF18abddmrf (SN 2018dsx).

Original languageEnglish
Article number152
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume886
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Dec 2019
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

Funding

FundersFunder number
Not addedST/P006892/1
Science and Technology Facilities CouncilST/P006892/1

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