Could SNAD160 be a Pair-instability Supernova?

By Maria Pruzhinskaya, on behalf of the SNAD team

SNAD160 zr-light curve (gray circles) – compared to the normal SN Ia Nugent's model (solid blue line), normal SN IIP 1999em model (solid red line) from Vincenzi et al. (2019) in zr-band, and synthetic R-band light curves of bright PISN models – He130 (green line) and R250 (purple line) from Kasen et al. (2011) at z=0.3 (dashed) and z=0.4 (solid). All models are shifted to the observer frame.

The SNAD team reports the discovery of SNAD160 (AT2018lzi) within the Zwicky Transient Facility third data release. The transient has been found using the active anomaly detection algorithm, an adaptive learning strategy aimed at incorporating expert knowledge into machine learning models. Our preliminary analysis shows that SNAD160 could be a superluminous supernova powered by a pair-instability mechanism – its light curve behaviour is consistent with the observed slow rise and slow decay expected from these events.

Read more in Pruzhinskaya et al., 2022 published in the Research Notes of the AAS and stay tuned!