The diversity of supernova explosions

从寻找金属丰度最低的环境，到研究暗能量的大规模动力学效应，爆炸的恒星或超新星是探索河外宇宙的重要探测器。然而，超新星作为一群事件的许多方面仍然不清楚，包括超新星类型的多样性，它们的亮度和它们的祖先恒星。这个项目将使用最近完成的两个大型超新星调查的数据——暗能量调查和OzDES调查——来探测和了解超新星数量的统计数据。这些关于数千颗超新星爆炸的数据，将是对高红移爆炸瞬态种群的第一次普查，特别关注核心坍缩超新星种群的多样性。这些结果将用于准备两个主要的新设施，这将彻底改变超新星的研究。第一个是大型综合巡天望远镜（LSST），这是一个8米长的巡天望远镜，每2-5天拍摄一次整个天空的图像，它将以前所未有的速度发现新的超新星爆炸。第二个是ESO 4MOST多目标摄谱仪，它将非常详细地研究数千颗超新星爆炸及其宿主星系，作为其时域河外巡天（TIDES）的一部分。我们的项目将提供优化这两个实验所需的数据，使我们能够确保设施的组合将提供Ia型超新星的最终宇宙学样本，并探测时域参数空间的全新部分。

Exploding stars, or supernovae, are important probes of the extragalactic universe, from finding the lowest metallicity environments, to studying the large-scale dynamical effects of dark energy. However, many aspects of supernovae as a population of events remain unclear, including the variety of supernova types, their luminosities, and their progenitor stars. This project will use data from two large, recently-completed surveys of supernovae - the Dark Energy Survey and the OzDES survey - to probe and understand the statistics of the supernova population. These data, on thousands of supernova explosions, will be the first census of the high-redshift explosive transient population, with a particular focus on the diversity of the core collapse supernova population.These results will then be used to prepare for two major new facilities that will revolutionise the study of supernovae. The first is the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), an 8-m survey telescope that will image the whole sky every 2-5 days, and which will find new supernova explosions at an unprecedented rate. The second is the ESO 4MOST multi-object spectrograph, which will study thousands of supernova explosions and their host galaxies in great detail as part of its TIme Domain Extragalactic Survey (TIDES). Our project will provide the data needed to optimise these two experiments, enabling us to ensure that the combination of facilities will provide the ultimate cosmological sample of type Ia supernovae, and probe completely new parts of time-domain parameter space.