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arXiv · 2308.04863

Using 4MOST to refine the measurement of galaxy properties: A case study of Supernova hosts

J. Dumayne·I. M. Hook·S. C. Williams·G. A. Lowes·D. Head·A. Fritz·O. Graur·B. Holwerda·A. Humphrey·A. Milligan·M. Nicholl·B. F. Roukema·P. Wiseman
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Abstract

The Rubin Observatory's 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time will observe near to 20 billion galaxies. For each galaxy the properties can be inferred. Approximately $10^5$ galaxies observed per year will contain Type Ia supernovae (SNe), allowing SN host-galaxy properties to be calculated on a large scale. Measuring the properties of SN host-galaxies serves two main purposes. The first is that there are known correlations between host-galaxy type and supernova type, which can be used to aid in the classification of SNe. Secondly, Type Ia SNe exhibit correlations between host-galaxy properties and the peak luminosities of the SNe, which has implications for their use as standardisable candles in cosmology. We have used simulations to quantify the improvement in host-galaxy stellar mass ($M_\ast$) measurements when supplementing photometry from Rubin with spectroscopy from the 4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST) instrument. We provide results in the form of expected uncertainties in $M_\ast$ for galaxies with 0.1 < $z$ < 0.9 and 18 < $r_{AB}$ < 25. We show that for galaxies mag 22 and brighter, combining Rubin and 4MOST data reduces the uncertainty measurements of galaxy $M_\ast$ by more than a factor of 2 compared with Rubin data alone. This applies for elliptical and Sc type hosts. We demonstrate that the reduced uncertainties in $M_\ast$ lead to an improvement of 7\% in the precision of the "mass step" correction. We expect our improved measurements of host-galaxy properties to aid in the photometric classification of SNe observed by Rubin.

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J. Dumayne, I. M. Hook, S. C. Williams, G. A. Lowes, D. Head, A. Fritz, O. Graur, B. Holwerda, A. Humphrey, A. Milligan, M. Nicholl, B. F. Roukema, P. Wiseman. 2023-08-09. Using 4MOST to refine the measurement of galaxy properties: A case study of Supernova hosts. https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.04863

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