A New Statistical Model for Population III Supernova Rates:
  Discriminating Between $\Lambda$CDM and WDM Cosmologies
  With new observational facilities becoming available soon, discovering and
characterising supernovae from the first stars will open up alternative
observational windows to the end of the cosmic dark ages. Based on a
semi-analytical merger tree model of early star formation we constrain
Population III supernova rates. We find that our method reproduces the
Population III supernova rates of large-scale cosmological simulations very
well. Our computationally efficient model allows us to survey a large parameter
space and to explore a wide range of different scenarios for Population III
star formation. Our calculations show that observations of the first supernovae
can be used to differentiate between cold and warm dark matter models and to
constrain the corresponding particle mass of the latter. Our predictions can
also be used to optimize survey strategies with the goal to maximize supernova
detection rates.
