Detecting Ancient Supernovae at z ~ 5 - 12 with CLASH
  Supernovae are important probes of the properties of stars at high redshifts
because they can be detected at early epochs and their masses can be inferred
from their light curves. Finding the first cosmic explosions in the universe
will only be possible with the James Webb Space Telescope, the Wide-Field
Infrared Survey Telescope and the next generation of extremely large
telescopes. But strong gravitational lensing by massive clusters, like those in
the Cluster Lensing and Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH), could reveal such
events now by magnifying their flux by factors of 10 or more. We find that
CLASH will likely discover at least 2 - 3 core-collapse supernovae at 5 < z <
12 and perhaps as many as ten. Future surveys of cluster lenses similar in
scope to CLASH by the James Webb Space Telescope might find hundreds of these
events out to z ~ 15 - 17. Besides revealing the masses of early stars, these
ancient supernovae will also constrain cosmic star formation rates in the era
of first galaxy formation.
