Astrometric Redshifts of Supernovae

Abstract Differential Chromatic Refraction (DCR) is caused by the wavelength dependence of our atmosphere’s refractive index, which shifts the apparent positions of stars and galaxies and distorts their shapes depending on their spectral energy distributions. While this effect is typically mitigated and corrected for in imaging observations, we investigate how DCR can instead be used to our advantage to infer the redshifts of supernovae from multiband, time-series imaging data. We simulate Type Ia supernovae in the proposed Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time Deep Drilling Field, and evaluate astrometric redshifts. We find that the redshift accuracy improves dramatically with the statistical quality of the astrometric measurements as well as with the accuracy of the astrometric solution. For a conservative choice of a 5 mas systematic uncertainty floor, we find that our redshift estimation is accurate at z < 0.6. We then combine our astrometric redshifts with both host-galaxy photometric redshifts and supernovae photometric (light-curve) redshifts and show that this considerably improves the overall redshift estimates. These astrometric redshifts will be valuable, especially since Rubin will discover a vast number of supernovae for which we will not be able to obtain spectroscopic redshifts.