Photometric type Ia supernova surveys in narrow band filters
  We study the characteristics of a narrow band type Ia supernova survey
through simulations based on the upcoming Javalambre Physics of the
accelerating universe Astrophysical Survey (J-PAS). This unique survey has the
capabilities of obtaining distances, redshifts, and the SN type from a single
experiment thereby circumventing the challenges faced by the resource-intensive
spectroscopic follow-up observations. We analyse the flux measurements
signal-to-noise ratio and bias, the supernova typing performance, the ability
to recover light curve parameters given by the SALT2 model, the photometric
redshift precision from type Ia supernova light curves and the effects of
systematic errors on the data. We show that such a survey is not only feasible
but may yield large type Ia supernova samples (up to 250 supernovae at $z<0.5$
per month of search) with low core collapse contamination ($\sim 1.5$ per
cent), good precision on the SALT2 parameters (average $\sigma_{m_B}=0.063$,
$\sigma_{x_1}=0.47$ and $\sigma_c=0.040$) and on the distance modulus (average
$\sigma_{\mu}=0.16$, assuming an intrinsic scatter
$\sigma_{\mathrm{int}}=0.14$), with identified systematic uncertainties
$\sigma_{\mathrm{sys}}\lesssim 0.10 \sigma_{\mathrm{stat}}$. Moreover, the
filters are narrow enough to detect most spectral features and obtain excellent
photometric redshift precision of $\sigma_z=0.005$, apart from $\sim$ 2 per
cent of outliers. We also present a few strategies for optimising the survey's
outcome. Together with the detailed host galaxy information, narrow band
surveys can be very valuable for the study of supernova rates, spectral feature
relations, intrinsic colour variations and correlations between supernova and
host galaxy properties, all of which are important information for supernova
cosmological applications.
