Seeing the first supernovae at the edge of the universe with JWST

Abstract

The first stars ended the cosmic dark ages and created the first heavy elements necessary for the formation of planets and life. The properties of these stars remain uncertain, and it may be decades before individual Population III (Pop III) stars are directly observed. Their masses, however, can be inferred from their supernova explosions, which may soon be found in both deep-field surveys by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and in all-sky surveys by the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). We have performed radiation hydrodynamical simulations of the near-infrared signals of Pop III pair-instability supernovae in realistic circumstellar environments with Lyman absorption by the neutral intergalactic medium. We find that JWST and WFIRST will detect these explosions out to z ∼ 30 and 20, respectively, unveiling the first generation of stars in the universe. © 2013. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.