arXiv · 2608.28416
Follow-up of SN 2025wny III: Spectroscopic Time-delay Measurements of a Strongly Gravitationally Lensed Superluminous Supernova
Abstract
We present spatially resolved spectra and infer the time-delays between the multiple images of the strongly gravitationally lensed superluminous supernova (SLSN) 2025wny at z=2.015. SN 2025wny is the first known spatially resolved strongly lensed SLSN and provides a unique opportunity to measure lensing delays through the temporal evolution of supernova spectra. We present a spectroscopic dataset spanning several months, including spatially resolved spectra of images A, B, C, D, and E. We identify and measure the wavelength evolution of spectral features using Gaussian-process modeling. The time delays are inferred by jointly fitting the temporal evolution of the spectral features, yielding $\Delta t_{AB}=-10.3 \pm 2.3$, $\Delta t_{AC}=0.1 \pm 3.6$, $\Delta t_{AD}=-65.7 \pm 3.5$, and $\Delta t_{AE}=3.7 \pm 8.8$ days (68% confidence intervals). These are the among most precise time-delay measurements obtained for a lensed supernova to date, whether from spectroscopic or photometric methods. The longest delay ($\Delta t_{AD}$) is particularly well constrained, with a ~5% precision. Combined with the lens model presented by M\"ortsell et al. (2026), the spectroscopic time-delays give a Hubble constant $H_0 = 70.2^{+8.2}_{-6.1}$ km/s/Mpc. Our analysis demonstrates that spectroscopic evolution provides an independent and complementary route to time-delay measurements in lensed supernova systems, avoiding reliance on photometric light curves alone. As future surveys discover larger samples of lensed supernovae, spectroscopic time-delay measurements will provide an important avenue for precision cosmography.
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Joel Johansson, Edvard Mörtsell, Ariel Goobar, Steve Schulze, Maggie L. Li, Yu-Jing Qin, Lin Yan, Hannah C. Turner, Suhail Dhawan, Alice Townsend, Jakob Nordin, Aleksandra Bochenek, Malte Busmann, Kaustav K. Das, Christoffer Fremling, Lluis Galbany, Alexa C. Gordon, Daniel Gruen, Mansi M. Kasliwal, Chang Liu, Zoë McGrath, Christopher Martin, Peter Massey, Martijn S. S. L. Oei, Daniel A. Perley, Andrés I. Ponte Pérez, Francisco Prada, Nikolaus Z. Prusinski, Nabeel Rehemtulla, R. Michael Rich, Surya Shivaprasad, Jesper Sollerman, Jacob L. Wise. 2026-08-28. Follow-up of SN 2025wny III: Spectroscopic Time-delay Measurements of a Strongly Gravitationally Lensed Superluminous Supernova. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28416
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