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arXiv · 2604.27511

Finding Strongly Lensed Supernovae from Blended Light Curves

Sangwoo Park·Arman Shafieloo·Alex G. Kim·Eric V. Linder·Xiaosheng Huang
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Abstract

We present a model-independent, photometry-only framework for identifying strongly lensed supernovae when multiple images are unresolved and blended into a single point source. Building on the simulation-based methodology of Bag et al. (2021), we apply this approach to real Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) data using a validation sample of spectroscopically confirmed Type Ia supernovae. The method models the observed flux as a superposition of two time-shifted components, and Bayesian inference is used to estimate the relative scaling and time delay. Applying this framework to 445 well-converged supernovae, we find that only a single object satisfies the selection criteria when adopting a conservative threshold of $\Delta t \ge 12$ days, corresponding to a false positive fraction of $1/445 \approx 0.22\%$. A laxer threshold of $\Delta t \ge 10$ days yields fourteen objects, for a false positive fraction of $3.15\%$. The method provides a scalable and model-independent first-stage filter for identifying lens-like candidates in large time-domain surveys such as the Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).

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Sangwoo Park, Arman Shafieloo, Alex G. Kim, Eric V. Linder, Xiaosheng Huang. 2026-04-30. Finding Strongly Lensed Supernovae from Blended Light Curves. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.27511

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