Projected Cosmological Constraints from Strongly Lensed Supernovae with the Roman Space Telescope

Abstract

Abstract One of the primary mission objectives of the Roman Space Telescope is to investigate the nature of dark energy with a variety of methods. Observations of Type I supernovae (SNe Ia) will be one of the principal anchors of the Roman cosmology program through traditional luminosity distance measurements. This SNe Ia cosmology program can provide another valuable cosmological probe, without altering the strategy of the mission: time delay cosmography with gravitationally lensed supernova (SN). In this work, we forecast lensed SN cosmology constraints with the Roman Space Telescope, while providing useful tools for future work. Using the anticipated characteristics of the Roman SNe Ia survey, we have constructed mock catalogs of expected resolved lensing systems, as well as strongly lensed Type Ia and core-collapse (CC) SN light curves, including microlensing effects. We predict Roman will find ∼11 lensed SNe Ia and ∼20 CCSNe, depending on the survey strategy. Next, we estimate the time delay precision obtainable with Roman (Ia: ∼2 days, CC: ∼3 days), and use a Fisher matrix analysis to derive projected constraints on H 0,Ω m , and the dark energy equation of state, w, for each SNe Ia survey strategy. A strategy optimized for the discovery of high-redshift SNe Ia is preferred when considering the constraints possible from both SNe Ia and lensed SN cosmology, also delivering ∼1.5 times more lensed SNe than other proposed survey strategies.