Search for γ-ray emission from superluminous supernovae with the Fermi-LAT

¹ Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ. Paris 6 et CNRS, UMR 7095, Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, 98bis bd Arago, 75014 Paris, France
e-mail: n.renault.tinacci@gmail.com, kotera@iap.fr
² Laboratoire AIM-Paris-Saclay, CEA/DSM/IRFU, CNRS, Université Paris Diderot, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
³ Astronomy Department, University of Geneva, Ch. d’Ecogia 16, 1290 Versoix, Switzerland
⁴ GRAPPA Institute, University of Amsterdam, 1098 XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Received: 7 March 2017
Accepted: 25 August 2017

Abstract

We present the first individual and stacking systematic search for γ-ray emission in the GeV band in the directions of 45 superluminous supernovae (SLSNe) with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). No excess of γ-rays from the SLSN positions was found. We report γ-ray luminosity upper limits and discuss the implication of these results on the origin of SLSNe and, in particular, the scenario of central compact object-aided SNe. From the stacking search, we derived an upper limit at 95% confidence level to the γ-ray luminosity (above 600 MeV) L_γ < 9.1 × 10⁴¹ erg s⁻¹ for an assumed E⁻² photon spectrum for our full SLSN sample. We conclude that the rate of the neutron stars born with millisecond rotation periods P ≲ 2 ms and B ~ 10¹²⁻¹³ G must be lower than the rate of the observed SLSNe. The luminosity limits obtained on individual sources are also constraining: in particular, SN2013fc, CSS140222, SN2010kd, and PTF12dam can only be born with millisecond periods if B ≲ 10¹³ G.